Prevent, Detect, & Contain: Comprehensive Safety Solutions Guide for K-12 Schools
A holistic guide to connecting programs, processes, and people around one goal: keeping every student and staff member safe.
Introduction
School safety is not defined by one product, one process, or one person. It is comprehensive, integrated, and requires the efforts of students and staff to create peaceful learning and working environments.
Addressing safety can feel like navigating through an ocean of icebergs where each represents a safety issue or concern. It can be challenging to understand the magnitude of a potential impact and get beneath the surface to understand the different types of risks your school faces.
Certain individual products, processes, and people can act like binoculars or lookouts to easily identify the tip of the iceberg – aka the issue. But without comprehensive tools, integrated processes, and coordinated teams of people, you will not be able to determine the size and magnitude of the icebergs to navigate around them safely.
It’s possible to navigate the surface and take a deeper dive regarding your school’s safety. The following guide provides comprehensive safety solutions to help you identify those issues, minimize risk, and create safer, healthier learning and working environments for your students and staff!
01 | Comprehensive Safety
To take on the safety and wellness issues facing schools, you need a solution that takes a holistic approach to connect programs, tools, processes, and people with the objective of Preventing, Detecting, and Containing issues before escalating into a crisis.
No one part of the solution can stand on its own. Instead, all work together and complement one another.
02 | Solution: Prevent
You may have heard the phrase “prevent the preventable.” If you have the tools to get ahead of the issue, the odds are very good that you will prevent it from ever becoming a significant risk or problem. Here are the types of programs, processes, and people who can “prevent the preventable” and stop an issue from ever happening.
Programs
- Wellness Curriculum
- Safety Curriculum
- Trauma-Informed Care
- Student 24/7 Crisis Help
- Self-Help Resources
Processes
- Gated Guest Check-In & Clearance
- Diverse & Inclusive Culture
- Student Safety Clubs / Events
- PBIS or Other Restorative Discipline
- Campus Safety Audit / Inspection
People
- School Psychologists
- Social Workers
- SROS
- Student & Staff
- Safety Ambassadors
Prevention programs educate students and staff on personal, social, and emotional learning such as self-control, anger management, and resiliency. These programs address topics like suicide prevention, recognizing signs of individuals at-risk, and prevention of sexual abuse and molestation. Programs provide students with resources such as access to 24/7 crisis hotlines, self-help resources, and/or community services.
Prevention processes and people foster safe cultures and environments through gated campuses, owning and evolving their campus culture, and creating safety nets through restorative discipline and mental wellness support.
Lightspeed StopIt™ offers four prevention programs that feed into processes and people – HELPme, Safety & Wellness Curriculum, Crisis Text Line and Teletherapy
HELPme
Delivered on a highly configurable mobile platform, HELPme provides support and resources to students, families, and staff using a healing-centered interface. The HELPme app trains all school users on the importance of asking for help, recognizing asking for help as a critical life skill, and providing a safe way to practice asking for and receiving help from one’s first interaction with the school.
HELPme Provides 3 Ways to HELP based on the user’s level of comfort:
- Self-Help: Get Resources
- Help from a Trained Crisis Counselor: Crisis Text Line
- Help from your School or Community: Get Help
- Preloaded with links to crisis helplines and resources
- Resources are configurable to meet your specific use-case
- Connect directly to trained crisis counselors from the HELPme app
- Students, parents, and staff can directly connect with school and local-based resources and ask for assistance
- Emergency Monitoring – Step by step routing to all of your emergency contacts
24/7 Crisis Text Line
Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7, high-quality text-based mental health support and crisis intervention. Students speak to a live, trained Crisis Counselor who helps move individuals from a hot to a cool place.
Prevention processes and people foster safe cultures and environments through gated campuses, owning and evolving their campus culture, and creating safety nets through restorative discipline and mental wellness support.
Safety & Wellness Curriculum
Professionally developed online video training curriculum in social and emotional learning, safety, and trauma-informed wellness care for students in grades 5-8 and 9-12. Each topic is 20-30 minutes and is supported by in-class or school activities.
Examples of curriculum topics:
- Mental Health & Wellness 101
- Abuse & Addiction
- Stress & Anxiety Management
- Self-Control & Anger Management
- Suicide Prevention Sexual Abuse & Molestation
- Creating Connected & Inclusive Cultures Brain Basics
- Resiliency & Coping Skills
- Teaching Empathy & Compassion
Teletherapy
Teletherapy provides scheduled access to a licensed therapist through a seamless online experience. It provides individualized counseling, short-term therapy, and professional development to support students, staff, educators, and parents.
Our unique solution offers a single resource for school leaders to address mental health needs through innovative and professional services.
03 | Solution: Detect
Detection goes hand in hand with prevention by leveraging technology to identify issues and concerns before they evolve into more serious situations. Detection is critical to “uncovering the unseen” and “intervening on the imminent.” The following are detection programs that every school should consider when building a safety and wellness solution for their students and staff:
Detection Programs arm students and staff with tools to uncover, alert, and report on issues, concerns, events, and actions individuals may be taking that could result in them hurting themselves or others physically or emotionally.
Programs
- Anonymous Reporting Systems
- Device & Network Surveillance
- Video & Audio Technology
- Violence prediction technology
- Door & Sound/Scream Sensors
- Climate & Student Surveys
- Metal detectors & X-ray machines
- Social media monitoring
Processes
- Anonymous Reporting Systems
- Device & Network Surveillance
- Video & Audio Technology
- Violence prediction technology
- Door & Sound/Scream Sensors
- Climate & Student Surveys
- Metal detectors & X-ray machines
- Social media monitoring
Lightspeed StopIt™ offers two detection programs designed to help individuals help others and uncover at-risk behaviors and actions across school-issued devices, files, and networks.
Prevention processes and people foster safe cultures and environments through gated campuses, owning and evolving their campus culture, and creating safety nets through restorative discipline and mental wellness support.
StopIt Anonymous Reporting System
Allows individuals to anonymously report safety, misconduct, or compliance concerns to school officials via app, website, or phone call.
Features:
- Warning sign training for students
- A 24/7/365 incident response center to receive and monitor all submissions
- Accredited incident response specialists
- Alert system for school officials
- App & web incident management system
- Seamless documentation
- Team communications for information sharing
- Two-way messaging with the submitter
- Inappropriate media blocking
- Personalized reporting
- Cloud-based system for easy integration
Digital Surveillance
Surveillance system scans, monitors, and filters devices, networks, and internet activity for violent, unsafe, or harmful behaviors.
Features:
- Real-time 24/7/365 scanning
- Ability to review, assess, and qualify content and activity 24/7 escalation of issues to school officials
- Incident Response Team
- Auto-profile to identify student patterns
- A parent portal for shared responsibility
- Customization to specific school needs
- Personalized reports of issues and trends
- Inappropriate media blocking
- Data and privacy protections
- Cloud-based system for easy integration
04 | Solution: Contain
Connected solutions that “Prevent” and “Detect” address a majority of safety concerns head-on. However, in the event of an emergency or identification of an at-risk individual, you need solutions to “contain” the risk and keep others safe. The following are programs, processes, and people who can be leveraged to contain an individual, situation, or event.
Contain programs empower school officials, safety teams, and others with the tools to respond quickly to emergencies by communicating events, actions, and status updates while instantly connecting teams to first responders for faster life-saving responses. Additionally, they help teams assess individuals to determine the level of threat they may pose to build a plan to get them the help they need.
Contain processes and people create habits that form the basis of response when there is an emergency or imminent situation while contain people help with immediate event response and post-event recovery.
Programs
- Panic System & Alerts
- Emergency Comm Systems
- Threat Assessment
- Case Management
Processes
- Lock-Down
- Lock-Ins
- Active Shooter
- Plans / Checklists
People
- School Safety Team
- SROS
- School Psychologist
- Local Police
Lightspeed StopIt™ offers three contain programs designed to complement processes and people – Lightspeed Notify™, Threat Assessment Training, and Threat Assessment Case Management.
Lightspeed Notify™
Mobilize your response team anywhere, anytime. Communicate and manage in real-time from one easy-to-use platform during emergency and non-emergency events. Take command of an event based on facts for rapid response when seconds count.
- Mass Communication
- Emergency Management
- Indoor Location
- Awareness
- Event Resolution
- 911+Concierge
- Enterprise Emergencies
Threat Assessment Training & Case Management
Trains multidisciplinary teams to review and assess the level of risk an individual may be to themselves or others – then develop a plan to protect the individual and possible targets
- Builds Cross-Functional Teams
- Provides Case Study Learning
- Step-by-Step Training & Forms
- Exclusive Multiple Protocols
- On-Demand or In-Person training
Threat Assessment Case Management
Automated, step-by-step program guides teams through your school’s threat assessment process to ensure consistent and compliant assessments, generate better-informed decisions and develop more impactful protection
- Supports Nation’s 3 Lead Models
- Step-by-Step Instruction
- Built-in Risk Criteria
- Creates Action Plan
- Audit Trail & Real-Time Status
Conclusion
How a Comprehensive Collection of Solutions Is Possible
A comprehensive collection of solutions (CSS) are a connected framework that forms a safety net that empowers long-term protection and wellness in K-12 environments. This safety net is made possible by school safety companies that offer leading programs to address the specific needs of your school.
As you review and select your CSS, be sure that your choices:
- Are a minimal draw on your resources and time
- Can be a 24/7 extension of your capabilities
- Include Industry-leading security & privacy protections
- Offer Industry-leading onboarding, training, and sustaining year in and year out
- Have trained responders available to support your team out-of-hours and beyond
- Prioritize industry-leading customer service where you speak and meet with real people not videos, bots, and other virtual humans.
Leveraging these types of solutions and a stand-out partner who can provide programs across all CSS framework areas means greater use, engagement, and ultimately safer, healthier learning environments.
Through these comprehensive solutions and industry-leading partner support, healthy and safe school environments can thrive, giving you true visibility of the entire iceberg of school issues and concerns. Get in touch to learn more about what StopIt can do for your K-12 school’s comprehensive safety plan.
