Northwest MHTTC

April 24 - 26, 2024 The 22nd Annual NWPBIS Conference will be held April 24 - 26, 2024 at the Tacoma Convention Center, Tacoma WA Join Educators and Experts from all over for the longest running PBIS conference in the country. Set in the beautiful Pacific Northwest at the Greater Tacoma Convention Center, come for 2-3 days of learning, networking, and camaraderie. Workshops will be scheduled on Wednesday, April 24th and exist as a stand-alone registration option or an add-on to the general conference. General sessions will be scheduled on April 25 and 26 in several strands, including Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, Mental Health, Equity, and Capacity Building. For more information & registration click here > KEYNOTE: Dr. Grafenreed is a Licensed Psychologist (LP) and a Licensed Specialist in School Psychology (LSSP). Despite her educational attainments and accolades, Dr. Grafenreed considers herself first an educator, having spent nearly 30 years in education as a School Psychologist. Dr. Grafenreed has served Houston area school districts for 24 years, as a School Psychologist, and later as an Education Specialist at Region 4 Education Service Center in the Department of Special Education Solutions. While at Region 4, the largest Education Service Center in Texas, Dr. Grafenreed led the Texas Behavior Support (TBS) Network, a Texas Education Agency with the goal of building capacity in Texas schools for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). During her tenure at Region 4, she helped develop the Texas Equity Summit, an annual conference designed to address key issues related to school discipline, equity, school climate, and PBIS as the lead for the TBS Network. Dr. Grafenreed also created the Region 4 Equity Collaborative, which was designed for leaders of districts and charter schools that had been identified as “Significantly Disproportionate” in discipline. The Equity Collaborative introduced district and charter school leaders to educational equity and equity literacy as a tool to address and eliminate disproportionality in school discipline. Dr. Grafenreed currently serves as a Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator at the University of Washington’s School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center. Want more information and school mental health resources? Visit the Northwest MHTTC's School Mental Health page and sign up for our newsletter for regular updates about events, trainings, and resources available to the Northwest region.

Understanding service animals, Emotional Support Animals, and the law in Washington State for tenants is the focus of this 90-minute webinar. ABOUT THIS EVENT Service animals, trained to handle different tasks for their person, have been a boon for disabled persons for decades. In this presentation, we will examine and explain what makes an animal a service animal pursuant to Washington and Federal law. Service animals perform different functions than Emotional Support Animals (ESA)s. ESAs are protected, but to a lesser extent, under Washington law, and ESAs provide tangible benefits to persons in need of emotional support. A tenant cannot be excluded from housing on the basis of a service animal or an ESA, but there are additional steps needed to protect tenants seeking housing with an ESA. There are no additional requirements regarding a service animal, except possibly educating housing providers. Responsibility for the service animal and the ESA’s conduct remains squarely with the tenant, and we will discuss what this means. The Northwest MHTTC is proud to offer this webinar in partnership with the Tenant Law Center. Resources: Slides RA guide for medical professionals FACILITATORS   Kasey Burton, Senior Staff Attorney Kasey Burton is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Tenant Law Center, which provides eviction prevention and tenant advocacy services to King County. Kasey has spent several years practicing landlord-tenant law as both a right-to-counsel attorney for tenants facing eviction and providing eviction prevention assistance, which has allowed her to pursue her passion for housing justice.  Kasey attended the University of Washington for both her Bachelor’s in Political Science, with a minor in Law, Societies, and Justice, and her Juris Doctorate. She is currently working on her Master’s in Public Administration at the University of Colorado Denver and hopes to use this degree to facilitate her engagement in policy change that provides Washington citizens who are tenants or unhoused with the protections they deserve.

ABOUT THIS EVENT This webinar is designed for direct service providers and staff who work with clients and community members. Learn what contributes to emotionally escalated interactions, ways to assess the situation, and practical strategies to defuse and de-escalate to support the health and safety of everyone involved. Offered in partnership with NAMI Seattle. FACILITATOR   Paul Getzel, Executive Director Paul joined the NAMI Seattle team in 2022. His prior history includes work in community health, food security, HIV/AIDS, and health equity advocacy. Paul is compelled in this work by the strong belief in the power of peer-to-peer models in reducing racial and social disparities, facilitating access to mental health services, reducing stigma, and building enduring support for individuals and families pursuing their best possible mental health. 

The fourth issue of our April newsletter features the Northwest MHTTC Year 5 Annual Report Summary, spotlights upcoming Northwest MHTTC events, and disseminates other events & resources of interest to the workforce.

Dear Friends, We want to inform you that the MHTTC School Mental Health supplement will not continue after September 2024. SAMHSA funding has ended without a future opportunity.  For six years, the Northwest MHTTC School Mental Health team has served the school mental health workforce in Region 10 (Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington) by curating timely and regionally-responsive events, developing tools for those in the field, and distributing critical resources. Rest assured that you can continue to access MHTTC school mental health materials, along with a broad array of additional ones, through the NWMHTTC SMH team’s home organization, the University of Washington School Mental Health Assessment, Research and Training (SMART) Center. While the supplement continues through the end of September, we invite you to start connecting with the SMART Center now. Join the UW SMART Center mailing list to continue receiving resource-rich newsletters Follow us on Facebook Engage with us on X/Twitter  Connect with us on LinkedIn Subscribe to our YouTube channel  Bookmark the UW SMART Center website From our team to yours, thank you for your partnership over the past six years. We couldn't have done it without you and credit your engagement, feedback, and support for our collective success.      “Don’t be dismayed at good-bye. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”    – Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah  Make sure to sign up for the SMART Center newsletter to stay up to date on all things school mental health. If you have additional questions about the transition, please reach out to [email protected]. In gratitude, The NWMHTTC SMH Team Kelcey Schmitz, Eric Bruns, Clynita Grafenreed, Casey Chandler, Jennifer Cohen, Elsa Ferguson, Nathaly Florez, Mari Meador, and Rayann Silva

This event is part of the UW SMART Center's 2024 Virtual Speaker Series. Learn more and register for upcoming events in the series here. Bullying Prevention in Elementary and Middle Schools: Foundations and Student Ownership Description: Session attendants will learn about school readiness for bullying prevention, what staff and students can do to create a safe school climate, and how school members and students can teach and reinforce prosocial behaviors.   Objectives Core features of bullying prevention  Increasing student buy-in and ownership  Examples of student ownership from exemplar districts    Presentation Materials Recording Available Here! About the Presenter: Rhonda Nese, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Special Education and Clinical Sciences Scientist, Prevention Science Institute Affiliate Faculty, Prevention Science Program   Rhonda Nese, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Special Education and Clinical Sciences at the University of Oregon and the Director of the Nese Lab. She is also a Scientist within the Prevention Science Institute, a multidisciplinary research institute at the University of Oregon. Dr. Nese’s research involves equitable intervention delivery within a multi-tiered behavior support framework focused on preventative strategies for improving student outcomes.​ Dr. Nese currently serves as the director of an IES grant to refine and test an intervention to reduce exclusionary discipline practices, improve student-teacher relationships, and increase instructional time for students in secondary settings, and co-principal investigator on additional federally-funded projects to identify factors that predict implementation and sustainability of evidence-based practices, to develop technology to improve online learning for educators, and to develop and validate an automated scoring system for oral reading fluency. Dr. Nese also provides technical assistance to state, district, and school level teams across the nation on preventative practices, including addressing implicit bias in school discipline, effective classroom behavior management strategies, bullying prevention, and alternatives to exclusionary discipline practices through the OSEP-funded National TA-Center on PBIS. Dr. Nese is the recipient of the 2022 Presidential Equity Award from the NorthWest PBIS Network and the 2022 Outstanding Early Career Award from the University of Oregon, the UO’s highest award for early career faculty to recognize and celebrate an emerging and significant record of scholarship and research.      Want more information and school mental health resources? Visit the Northwest MHTTC's School Mental Health page and sign up for our newsletter for regular updates about events, trainings, and resources available to the Northwest region.