Over the past year, the mdlogix team has worked closely with a coalition of education and mental health professionals throughout Michigan. Led by Nick Jaskiw, President of the Michigan Association of School Psychologists (MASP), this coalition has been advocating for a comprehensive statewide system of care to identify and support students at risk for behavioral health issues. The coalition acknowledges the complexity of the times in which we live, and its members are committed to creating a community of practice to help address these issues. They strive to create opportunities where people can make connections, share solutions, and collectively move work forward to reduce mental health stigma and provide quality care to students across Michigan.
With new resources provided through legislation and amendments to the state Medicaid plan, the coalition sees an opportunity to make a long-lasting impact on the way Michigan supports mental health in schools. This team is currently developing the Behavioral Health Learning Collaborative (BHLC) of Michigan, which will support school districts as they implement robust systems of care, enhancing critical learning opportunities for all people involved in those systems. The BHLC will provide a multi-tiered learning space to promote best practices, provide technology, and share resources that can help school personnel, service providers, students, and their families. Most importantly, it gives people a place to learn with and from each other.
The learning collaborative will also serve as a user group for a proof of concept project involving several Michigan educational service agencies. These agencies will be working directly with schools to use our BH-Works software platform to screen and refer students to services during the 2020-2021 school year. This group will have access to a BHLC website that will provide links to a variety of resources, including an online learning and training center that will continuously evolve and improve.
As the coalition builds out the BHLC website (scheduled to go live in December 2020), Jaskiw stresses that this collaborative is more than a collection of web resources. “The BHLC of Michigan is not a website,” he explains. “It’s a culture that is changing the way behavioral health works.”
Learn more about The Michigan Association of School Psychologists.