It is not a screening result. It is a determination a trained person makes in the room, with the basis written down.
The screen sets urgency. The conversation sets acuity.
ECR is not a different population from High Risk. It is the same students at their most acute.
How a determination gets made
Any single indicator can qualify. There is no scoring and no threshold count.
Judgment can escalate. It never de-escalates. A student who meets an indicator is ECR regardless of how the conversation feels afterward.
When in doubt, treat as ECR.
Who decides: the safety planner, with the consulting clinician consulted the same day. See Module 5.5.
What gets written down: the determination, what triggered it, and every action with times.
What happens, and how fast
| Within | What |
|---|---|
| Immediately | Continuous supervision begins. The student is not left alone |
| ~10 minutes | School staff on scene |
| ~15 minutes | Administrator notified |
| ~15 minutes | School expressly assumes supervision |
| ~30 minutes | Contact with a guardian or another adult who can lessen the risk begins |
| Before staff leave | Documentation complete |
| 24 hours | School contacts the family to confirm what happened and what comes next |
| 72 hours | School confirms the student is connected to care. An actual appointment, not a phone number |
Someone stays with that student until responsibility has been handed to a person who has accepted it. Not referred to. Accepted by, with a name and a time.
Who gets contacted
ORS 109.680(2)(c)(A) requires disclosure to, and safety planning with, the parent, the legal guardian, or others the provider reasonably believes can prevent or lessen the risk.
Default to the parent or guardian. Always try. Document every attempt with a time.
Where the guardian cannot be reached: keep trying, record each attempt, and record what you did instead and who else was notified. A student does not go home to an unprepared house because a phone was not answered.
Where guardian involvement would endanger the student, ORS 109.680(3) provides that the provider need not disclose to that person. You are still required to disclose to someone who can lessen the risk, and the student can help identify who. The determination is made with the clinician and documented. See Module 1.3.
Mandatory reporting still applies. Consulting a supervisor does not transfer the obligation.
Critical Reflection. “Unreachable” is often a wrong assumption.
A parent who does not answer at 11am may be on a factory floor, in a field, driving a route, or at a job where a personal call costs them the shift. That is not disengagement.
A parent who speaks limited English may not answer an unknown number, or may answer and not understand the urgency. Get an interpreter on the line before you need one. Not a bilingual student, not a sibling, not the student themselves.
A family with immigration concerns may be afraid of anything official. Be explicit and early that this is about their child’s safety and nothing else.
And for a transgender or LGBTQ student who is not out at home, notification is not a neutral act. Ask the student what happens if you call. Their answer is clinical information. See Module 8.10 and Module 8.11.
The lethal means conversation happens with every guardian
No exceptions, and it is the part most likely to be skipped. See Module 6.6.
Dispositions, least to most restrictive
- Home, with the safety plan, means restricted, and a named adult supervising
- Crisis line consultation
- Mobile crisis team
- Walk-in crisis clinic or urgent care
- Hospital emergency department
- Ambulance transport
- Law enforcement transport
Work down from the top, not up from the bottom. The least restrictive option that keeps the student safe is the right one, and law enforcement transport for a young person in a mental health crisis carries its own harm.
When the student comes back
Re-entry is the school’s process, not SAFER’s. Considerations rather than a protocol: who meets them at the door, what their teachers know and do not, what the plan says about the school day, and who is checking in and when.
A district policy statement
For districts adding this to an Adi’s Act plan:
Where a student is determined to be at elevated clinical risk, the school shall assume responsibility for continuous supervision and shall activate the appropriate crisis or emergency response. The student shall remain under continuous supervision until responsibility has been formally transferred to a parent or guardian, another adult identified as able to lessen the risk, a crisis responder, or an emergency department provider, and that transfer shall be documented. This protocol supplements and does not replace district crisis policy and procedure adopted under ORS 339.343.
Records note. ORS 336.216(4) provides that results of a universal mental health screening may not be included in a student’s education record. Where ECR documentation lives, who holds it, and how it stays separate needs settling with the district before screening day. See Module 1.2.
See also Module 5.2 on the bands, Module 5.5 on the consulting clinician, and Module 6.3 on planning with a student at this level.
