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Kellogg Awards $500K to Harvard Graduate School of Education to support work of school counselors

The W. K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded a three-year grant of $527,950 to the Collaborative for Integrated School Services (CISS), an interdisciplinary support project for school counseling practitioners, housed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Although school counseling practitioners often know the most about the increasingly complex problems that burden today's kids, large caseloads and very diverse job responsibilities often isolate and marginalize these professionals, limiting what they can do to help the kids who most need consistent, comprehensive guidance and support.

CISS was established in 1991 to respond to the fact that school-based counselors, psychologists, social workers, and nurses often lack the professional supports that can help them make a lasting difference in the lives of these kids. CISS provides interdisciplinary, continuing education in the form of workshops, conferences, peer supervision groups, and publications. The initiative aims to extend and strengthen the range and quality of the services these professionals provide in all kinds of school settings: public and independent; rural, suburban, and urban; and elementary and secondary. Since 1993, CISS has sponsored local and national training programs such as "Full-Service Schools: New Models for School-Community Collaboration," "Resilient Youth in a Violent World: New Perspectives and Practices," and "Sexual Abuse: Helping Kids Cope in Schools." The meetings have drawn practitioners from a great many states, including California, Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Vermont.

CISS founder and director Dr. Margot Welch worked as a psychologist in school, community, and court settings before receiving a doctorate in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

"Given the string of school shootings last spring, significant support for these practitioners who could help identify at-risk kids is particularly timely," says Welch. "This grant from the Kellogg Foundation will help CISS move toward realizing our three-year plan to expand local and national training programs, extend consultative, advocating, and support services, and strengthen the important school-community-university partnerships being developed through the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Risk and Prevention Program. And it will support our efforts to help the public understand the scale of the problems kids are up against and some of the new solutions that promise great hope for the future."

About The Kellogg Foundation

The W. K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 to "help people help themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to improve their quality of life and that of future generations." Its programming activities center around the common visions of a world in which each person has a sense of worth; accepts responsibility for self, family, community, and societal well-being; and has the capacity to be productive and to help create nurturing families, responsive institutions, and healthy communities.

To achieve greatest impact, the foundation targets its grants toward specific focal points or areas. These include health; food systems and rural development; youth and education and higher education; and philanthropy and volunteerism. When woven throughout these areas, funding also is provided for leadership; information systems/technology; efforts to capitalize on diversity; and family, neighborhood, and community development programming. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and southern Africa.

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