With a strong focus on community-based prevention, Umonhon Nation Schools is providing a new resource called TIPS to report potential school safety concerns.
Community members (students, parents, employees, neighbors, etc.) almost always observe red flags and warning signs prior to a violent event, but too often, this information is not shared with the right people and the opportunity for early intervention is missed.
The TIPS (Threat Assessment, Incident Management and Prevention Services) Platform from Awareity allows students, parents, faculty, staff and community members to anonymously or confidentially report bullying, drugs/alcohol, abuse/neglect, harassment, self-harm, suicide risks, vandalism, threats to harm, weapons, truancy or other potentially disruptive student behaviors. Reports can be made online from the school’s website (www.unpsk-12.org) or by calling the hotline number (402-837-4100).
“We want to provide students and their families an outlet to report concerns…and not have to worry about repercussions,” said Shannon Gibson, counselor at Umonhon Nation Schools. “Kids can be hesitant to report things because they’re afraid of being further harassed. That makes it difficult to get the information we need to conduct an investigation. We hope this will help solve that issue and ensure no at-risk students slip through the cracks.”
After a report is made, the appropriate personnel within the school are immediately notified and can investigate the validity of the report and determine an appropriate response plan. The TIPS platform allows school personnel to not only receive incident reports, but also provides administrators with comprehensive web-based tools to log student information and keep documented notes on intervention and threat assessment strategies, next steps, follow-up actions and connections to community resources.
“We need to be more proactive in our world today, not reactive. Having this community resource with a website and phone number that can be reached 24 hours a day has so many benefits. Allowing us to have knowledge of certain situations before the next school day prevents a lot of unnecessary chaos and stress for both students and staff,” says Gibson.
All calls made to the TIPS hotline are answered by degreed professionals that, in addition to taking the incident report, will answer questions, and can provide emotional support and referrals to resources as necessary.
TIPS was launched within Umonhon Nation Schools last month and has already helped school administrators become aware of multiple situations that may have otherwise gone un-reported.
About Awareity:
Awareity helps leading organizations prevent the preventable and successfully achieve all 6 essential steps to prevention. Awareity is reinventing the way schools and organizations of all types improve safety, prevent regulatory failures, compliance fines, lawsuits, privacy breaches, safety disconnects, operational challenges, ethical lapses, incident reporting failures, workplace violence and more. Awareity offers an innovative and cost-effective prevention platform to connect the dots, eliminate embarrassing gaps and realize a better bottom line. For more information about TIPS visit www.awareity.com or contact Awareity at info@awareity.com.