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Responding to Students of Concern Resource Center

About the Toolkit

The Student Affairs Forum, a research membership within the EAB, is pleased to provide this collection of resources for behavioral intervention teams (BITs). The Forum gathered these materials through an extensive literature review and during more than 130 interviews with Student Affairs practitioners at a diverse group of institutions in the United States and Canada. The resources provided for members include policy and procedure manuals, outreach and training materials, diagnostic audits, assessment reports, and email templates. 

In addition, the Forum created templates to supplement institution-specific resources to address implementation gaps surfaced in the research. The Forum’s implementation tools include a procedure manual template, a gap-analysis spreadsheet, and a website audit. Members can use these resources to streamline the launch of their BIT, implement new outreach strategies, or quickly optimize current team processes.

Tools

1. Assessment Materials

2. BIT Websites

3. Databases and Recordkeeping

4. Job Descriptions

5. Legal Resources

6. Outreach and Community Education Materials

7. Post-Referral Communication Templates

8. Procedures Manuals and Policy Statements

9. Team Training Materials

Assessment Materials

Effective BITs aggregate data on caseloads, types of concerns, referral sources, and other performance indicators to communicate team impact to senior administrators and fine-tune processes and procedures.

The materials in this section, consisting primarily of reports and data aggregation tools, offer a glimpse at the types of information that teams should be tracking and sharing with institutional stakeholders.

Institutional resources

Forum resources

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BIT Websites

When faculty, staff, and students notice concerning behavior, they often turn to the web for guidance. Unfortunately, many behavioral intervention teams do not maintain a prominent online presence. Even at institutions with dedicated BIT websites, faculty, staff, and students may struggle to find the site through browsing or institution search engines.

Model BIT websites all include basic information such as team mission, instructions for referrals, team membership, and guidelines for how to proceed in an emergency. When designing websites, administrators should also ensure that high-traffic sites such as counseling services, faculty and staff portals, the office of the dean of students, and campus safety include links to the dedicated BIT website.

Institutional resources

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Databases and Recordkeeping

Keeping records of BIT work ensures that team members perform their duties thoroughly and without oversights. In addition, it allows administrators to provide documentation of the team’s actions if needed.

Many institutions choose to go with a database system developed by a third-party vendor. Other institutions opt for a password-protected Excel spreadsheet that one or multiple team members manage. The resources below will assist team leaders in their choice in a system, and will allow for streamlined record-keeping if the Excel option is selected.

Institutional resources

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Job Descriptions

Working with students of concern is complex and time-consuming, yet the job descriptions of many administrators who serve on BITs fail to outline the duties associated with the individual’s role on the team. Exemplary institutions write BIT duties into the job descriptions of the administrators who sit on them.

Additionally, many institutions support BIT members with a formal case manager position within student affairs. The below resources include examples of case manager job descriptions that can prove useful in crafting a job posting for this position.

Institutional resources

Forum resources

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Responding to and assisting students of concern presents several legal challenges. Recent changes to Title II regulations regarding harm-to-self and the direct threat standard have complicated the work of behavioral intervention teams. Many student affairs professionals have expressed concern that the loss of involuntary withdrawal on the basis of threat to self has removed a last-resort tool for convincing students of concern and their families to focus on treatment. In many cases, administrators have been forced to route these difficult cases through student conduct proceedings.

Despite ongoing confusion about how to assist students who pose a threat to themselves, many institutions have chosen to revise their involuntary withdrawal policies to comply with the Title II changes. In addition, several professional associations have released guidance on the Title II direct threat standard changes.

Institutional and other external resources

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Outreach and Community Education Materials

An effective response strategy for students of concern requires an informed campus community. Training and outreach to faculty, staff, and students generate referrals at earlier stages of distress, thus increasing student affairs professionals’ chances of helping distressed students. Face-to-face presentations are the primary medium through which BITs educate campus constituents. Progressive teams, however, recognize that faculty, staff, and students may forget their training.

To facilitate referrals, the Student Affairs Forum recommends that BITs create comprehensive campus education campaigns that include in-person training, quick reference materials, and just-in-time reminders.

Institutional resources

Forum resources

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Post-referral Communications

Contacting referrers after they submit a concern helps educate stakeholders about BIT procedures and build open lines of communication with them. Yet despite these benefits, most institutions gather referrals without informing referrers that the team has heard their concerns.

The below email template provides a framework that administrators may use to structure their post-referral communication with referrers.

Forum resources

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Procedures Manuals and Policy Statements

Formal guidelines help order the complex, difficult work that BITs undertake. Yet many institutions establish and operate BITs without officially delineating how the team will operate, who will serve on it, and how far its authority extends.

The below resources vary in length from six to 72 pages and demonstrate how administrators outline the scope of BITs. These documents provide a sturdy foundation from which to stage BIT operations. They may also offer just-in-time guidance to team members who are unsure about how to proceed on a case.

Forum resources

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Team Training Materials

Many teams believe that their subject-matter expertise and experience on committees and working groups prepares them adequately for BIT work. Nevertheless, teams that lack training opportunities often suffer from process inefficiencies and weak group dynamics. The below training materials will help team chairs facilitate team-building exercises and update team members on how to approach students-of-concern cases.

Institutional and other external resources

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