After School Programs
The ASPIRE After School Program, directed by Susan Lovett, is a therapeutic After School Program at LGF. We serve students who have been referred by their Academy Leader or Social Worker for extra support academically, socially and/or emotionally. The staff of ASPIRE develop strong, supportive relationships with the students and keep in regular contact with the students' teachers and families. We offer one hour of homework help and tutoring and one hour of fun enrichment activities such as drama, dance, basketball, cooking and art. The students attend the program Monday through Thursday, from 3:30-6:00 pm. There is a $50 fee for each eight-week session. We also offer sliding scale fees based on income. The ASPIRE After School program takes place throughout the school year and in July and August we run a full day summer program.
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Connecting With Care:
A Community-School Partnership to Promote Mental Health Supports for Children and Families
1. Relevant History at LGF:
Beginning with the 2007-2008 school year, Connecting With Care (CWC) began providing mental health services to children at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School. Connecting With Care is a program of the Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention (AIP) in collaboration with Boston Children’s Hospital, the Boston Public Schools, and three community mental health agencies: the Home For Little Wanderers, Family Service of Greater Boston, and Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC). Project RIGHT, the lead local community organizing entity in the Grove Hall area of Dorchester, provides community guidance and outreach.
Connecting With Care coordinates these partnerships, including matching appropriate clinicians with the partner schools. The clinicians are master’s-level professionals who provide full-time, therapeutic services in the schools, and they are hired for the project through the partner agencies, creating a linkage between the schools and community resources. As full members of each school’s professional community, they are available to collaborate with teachers to address non-academic barriers to academic achievement for students most in need of mental health supports.
2. What are the key challenges?
Initially, the challenge was about getting the word out to each academy, clarifying our role (e.g., we provide individual and family therapy, and we are not a crisis intervention service), and educating the staff about identifying mental health issues. The current challenge is that the caseload of the clinician assigned to LGF is now full, and we have a wait-list. According to the principal and the four academies, a Spanish-speaking clinician is needed to accommodate the needs of Latino families, and to handle the growing wait-list of English-speaking children. However, the scarcity of qualified, Spanish-speaking clinicians and/or clinicians of-color who are willing to work for non-BPS salaries has been an on-going obstacle to recruitment for our partner agencies. Also, there have been some challenges with parent engagement.
3. What are next steps for the school in this area?
We encourage school staff to continue to make referrals to CWC, so that when a clinician is recruited, he or she can begin immediately to work with children. Also, since staff members have a pre-existing relationship with the parents of referred children, it is very important and useful for us to continue to work together in order to make initial connections and to keep families engaged in treatment. The Evening Family Clinic is an added convenience for families who require evening appointments, which is in its early weeks of operation.
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Project Shifa
Project Shifa is a school-based counseling and advocacy program for Somali adolescent refugees. The program currently operates at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School and English High School. In addition to utilizing Trauma Systems Therapy (TST) to target emotional and behavioral problems resulting from severe trauma exposure, the program relies on "cultural brokers": individuals from the Somali community and student interns who aid non-Somali mental health clinicians in providing culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health services to increase treatment compliance and reduce stigma. The Boston University School of Social Work is currently funding two tuition-free scholarships to qualifying Somali individuals to provide mental health services to Somali youth and their families in the community upon graduation. These students work as "cultural brokers" during their first year of graduate school, and provide treatment during the second and third years of their training. For the 2008-2009 school year, Project Shifa is providing individual therapy to 17 children, and group therapy to 23 children.
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Students and Families are able to access their grades and information on each class wherever there is internet access. This allows families the luxury of constantly being able to be connected to their student's academic lives.
(Click the title above to see it for yourself!)
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In our gallery below, you will find images of community and collegiate partnerships, student opportunities, and professional development opportunities that allow staff to help differentiate curriculum and accomodate different types of learners.
