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Citation:

Poole, D., L. (1998). The SAFE Project: Community-driven partnerships in health, mental health, and education to prevent early school failure. Health and Social Work, 22(4), 282-288.

Annotation:
This article presents a case study of a school-community project designed to prevent early school failure through the provision of health, mental health, and education services. The project was implemented in rural Oklahoma, and primarily focused on the provision of services to elementary students and their families, although some high school services were provided as well. Services were provided by school-community counselors at the school level and focused on early intervention and prevention, rather than crisis intervention. The project was initiated by a citizenÕs task force in the community and developed into a partnership between this task force, the school district, and community agencies. The final evaluation report that is referenced in this article concluded that students at the test site (the SAFE Project) had improved significantly on several variables, as compared to the comparison site students. SAFE Project students scored higher in self-esteem, had a higher mean GPA, and had higher scores on the Iowa test. Students in the SAFE Project had significantly fewer absences, disciplinary referrals, and classes failed than comparison students during the first two years of the evaluation. The evaluator concluded that these variables did not improve in the third year because their totals were already well below the levels reported when the students entered the project. No information was reported on how data were collected or measured. Analysis was conducted using a multiple analysis of covariance, but actual statistics were not reported in this article. This study provides a general overview of a school-community collaboration to prevent early school failure. It is not exhaustive in its scope, but may provide useful guidance about implementation and potential results.