MANDAN, N.D. (AP) - A pilot program in Mandan Public Schools aimed to help students who may have experienced trauma will expand in the coming school year to other districts across the state.
This past school year, Mandan Public Schools and the Mandan Police Department started the Handle with Care program, an initiative developed at the West Virginia Center for Children’s Justice that provides additional support to children involved in domestic violence calls or other incidents involving law enforcement, The Bismarck Tribune reported.
Bismarck and Fargo have expressed interest in starting a similar program.
The Handle with Care program operates simply: If Mandan Police officers respond to a call during the school year in which a child is involved, they send an email to district administration stating only the child’s name. From there, administrators send an email to the child’s school principal and counselors letting them know the child should be handled with care.
Since the program launched in Mandan, notifications increased from nine in the first quarter to 11 in the second quarter and 28 in the third quarter. Those involved with the program in Mandan attribute the increase to schools becoming more comfortable with the program and officers learning to incorporate it into their routine.
“What we’ve seen with the data from Mandan is it’s been utilized a little bit more as schools become more comfortable with it, or people get more on board with it,” said Elizabeth Pihlaja, program manager with Prevent Child Abuse North Dakota, which launched the pilot program in Mandan.
Prevent Child Abuse North Dakota is a nonprofit that has existed under different names in North Dakota since the 1970s, but with the same goal of improving children’s health and welfare, strengthening families and supporting parents, Pihlaja said.
The organization offers prevention programs, including a statewide home visiting program in Belcourt and Spirit Lake Nation, in which volunteers do home visits one to two times a month with a family as a way to model positive parenting.
The organization’s executive director, Sandra Tibke, learned about the Handle with Care program in West Virginia and decided to bring it to Mandan as a pilot.
“This is the first program of its kind that we at least plan on launching on a big scale, where we are creating these public-private partnerships to really achieve the best outcomes for our kids,” Pihlaja said.
This summer, or by the end of next school year, the organization aims to have trained five other districts - Fargo, Grand Forks, Bismarck, Dickinson and Jamestown - with the eventual goal of having training available for any district.
Children who experience trauma can display disruptive behavior, and it can affect their academic performance, Pihlaja said. The program provides an opportunity to help them.
“Everybody can kind of form that community. It takes a village to raise a child, and I think we’ve become really isolated and grown away from that in our communities, and this is a way to really reinforce that safety net for our kids,” she said.
Mandan Public Schools superintendent Mike Bitz said the program is free and easy for staff to use. Once the district gets a Handle with Care notification, it can reach out to the student’s principal and counselor, who will touch base with the student and determine if additional services are needed.
“It really allows us to show more compassion and more understanding to a student who is going through a difficult time,” Bitz said.
The notification does not give any information about the incident in which the child was involved due to privacy issues, according to Mandan Police Lt. Pat Haug. The increase in notifications by the end of the year was due to more officers remembering to use it, and because, toward the end of the school year, domestic violence calls tend to increase in Mandan, Haug said.
Haug said the program is an easy, cost-neutral tool police departments and school districts can use to prevent student misbehavior.
“It’s such a simple program and it gives schools a heads-up (about possibly) having some issues with a child,” he said. “We’re trying to look at why (students) are acting out, not because they are acting out. That’s important for us to understand why, and by us sending them that email, now they kind of have a why.”
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Information from: Bismarck Tribune, http://www.bismarcktribune.com
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