How Schools and Community Resources Can Work Together with Youth, Families, and Agencies to Reduce the Risk of Youth Violence 

presented by: Dr. Kathy Seifert 

The risk factors for school violence are multi-faceted.  However, they are well defined in the research literature on youth violence.  Unfortunately, information on these risk factors are not fully distributed throughout the multiple agencies that ultimately will solve the youth violence problem. 

There are 3 subgroups of those youth that may be at risk for violence:  Adolescence Only Aggression Group, Chronic Aggressive Behavior Group, and the Mentally Ill or Autistic Erupter Group.  The risk factors for these 3 groups are quite different and need to be understood to refer young people to the most effective services.  These risk and resiliency factors will be fully discussed in this seminar.

For violence prevention to be effective, multiple agencies need to work together. This process is well defined in South Dakota regulation (https://www.sdbor.edu/policy/documents/1-28.pdf).  Agencies that need to work together include schools, Departments of Juvenile Services, Departments of Social Services, Behavioral Health Agencies, School based behavioral health personnel and the medical health community.  This can be accomplished through multi-agency Threat Assessment Teams.  This presentation will discuss how to set up a multi-agency Threat Assessment Team in South Dakota using SD regulations.

Using a common violence risk reduction tool among agencies facilitates this coordination of care and creating Violence Risk Reduction Plans.  Informing Referral Sources of the Risk Reduction Plan is also very useful and effective.  The elements of Risk Reduction Planning will be discussed at this seminar.  These include risk and resiliency factors and evidence-based practice to address them; family functioning and its relationship to youth violence; trauma’s contribution to youth violence and evidence-based practices; and trauma’s contribution to delayed developmental skills.

This will be a LIVE webinar. A recording for later registration and access will be provided.