How Schools Can Help Students Recover from Traumatic Experiences: A Tool Kit for Supporting Long-Term Recovery. Technical Report

This tool kit is designed for schools that want to help students recover from traumatic experiences such as natural disasters, exposure to violence, abuse or assault, terrorist incidents, and war and refugee experiences. It focuses on long-term recovery, as opposed to immediate disaster response. To help schools choose an approach that suits their needs, the tool kit provides a compendium of programs for trauma recovery, classified by type of trauma (such as natural disaster or exposure to violence). Within each trauma category, it provides information that facilitates program comparisons across several dimensions, such as program goals, target population, mechanics of program delivery, implementation requirements, and evidence of effectiveness. It explains how to obtain each program's manuals and other aids to implementation and also discuss sources of funding for school-based programs. Developed after hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the United States in the fall of 2005, the tool kit was used as part of a research project aimed at helping students displaced by these natural disasters. It was subsequently revised to reflect lessons learned about the kind of information schools needed most and updated to include additional programs uncovered during the research project. Appended are: (1) How can schools help students immediately after a traumatic event? (2) How can mental health staff and other school personnel help each other and themselves? (3) Index of Programs. [This research is part of the RAND Corporation's continuing program of self-initiated research, which is supported in part by donors and the independent research and development provisions of RANDss contracts for the operation of its U.S. Department of Defense federally funded research and development centers. This research was conducted within RAND Health under the auspices of the RAND Gulf States Policy Institute (RGSPI).]