As the United States contends with a mental health crisis, schools have been actively working to hire, train and retain school mental health professionals. When interviewing potential professionals for the job, schools look for candidates that connect well with students. One way to ensure this connection is to engage students in the hiring process. One of NCSSLE’s Project Prevent grantees, the Capitol Region Education Council (CREC) in Hartford, CT has done this by implementing student-led interview panels as part of their clinician hiring process.
Pilot Process
During the 2023-24 school year, CREC established their first panel, made up of 8 students grades 10-12 from across the district. Recruited by a district staff person who is connected with students across the district, the students met with a lead clinician to formulate questions and prepare before conducting the interview themselves over Zoom. During each interview, the students took turns asking candidates questions such as “why do you want to do this work?” and shared their thoughts and concerns in a private debrief afterwards. Student input was then used to determine whether the clinician would be hired.
Next Steps
After concluding the first panel, the district coordinator sought feedback from the participating students on how the interview process might be improved for future panels. CREC plans to continue using the student-led panel process to hire more clinicians, citing student input as essential to hiring quality school-based mental health providers that will effectively meet student needs. The panel's impact can be seen in the empowerment of students to share their input and their closeness to the newly hired clinician.
Student engagement is also an ongoing goal for CREC. They have continued to incorporate student voice in their work year-round by collecting feedback from students about summer programs, having them run restorative circles, and more. Not only does CREC want to hire the right staff and run quality programs, but empower their students by giving them a say in the processes.
For more details on CREC’s student-led hiring effort, listen to an episode of our In Session podcast that features the CREC Project Director and a tenth-grade student panelist.