The gap between running a screening and running a program.
The move
A screening produces a list of individuals. Interventions get planned from patterns.
Four questions that turn one into the other:
1. Where does risk concentrate?
By grade, by period, by anything you can cut it by. If 10th grade is carrying most of your High Risk, that is a 10th grade intervention, not forty individual conversations.
2. What is the dominant presentation?
A cohort that is mostly anxiety needs a different group than a cohort that is mostly depression. Your severity bands answer this, and they decide group composition. See Module 9.5.
3. Where is the pathway breaking?
The barrier column in care coordination. Twenty students with "waitlist" written beside their name is a different problem from twenty with "caregiver declined," and they have different solutions. See Module 9.2.
4. Who has nobody?
From the opt-out survey and from the safety plans. A student who could not name a trusted adult is the most actionable finding in the dataset and it does not require a provider to address.
What comes out of it
- Tier 2 group composition. Who is in which group, based on what the data says rather than who volunteered.
- Where to put staff. If risk concentrates in one grade, that is where the lunch group, the check-in, and the extra counsellor hour go.
- What to fix structurally. Gatekeeper training for the staff students actually name. A different room for the counselling office. A change to how the screening is introduced.
- What to ask for. See Module 10.3.
✓ Take Action. Within three weeks of screening week, hold a one-hour meeting with the data on screen and these four questions on the wall. Produce three actions with names on them. Not a report.
