Student Support Program

The CIS Student Support Program is designed to address the risk and protective factors that influence a child’s decision to stay in school. Student Support Specialists are positioned in 15 schools throughout Charleston and Berkeley counties, working with school administrators, counselors, and teachers to identify and place children in support services. Those children identified to be at the highest risk for not completing high school are case-managed and offered a blanket of scientifically proven protective services to counter the risk factors they may face. Using evidence-based approaches, these specialists have the following main objectives:

• Increase academics
• Improve school attendance
• Improve positive behavior
• Increase attachments to school
• Decrease teen pregnancy
• Increase family cohesiveness

Communities In Schools meets these objectives by providing the following services:

1. Tutoring
2. Mentoring
3. Service-learning
4. After school programs
5. Enrichment and field trip opportunities
6. Life skills
7. Abstinence-based pregnancy prevention and character development
8. Family connectedness programs and parent support groups
9. Identifying needs and brokering social services to students and parents

The level of services provided children is characterized based on the needs they exhibit:

Level 1 – Services and resources that are widely accessible to any student at the CIS site. They are short-term or long-term interventions and are provided or brokered on an as-needed or as-available basis. Students do not need to be enrolled in a specific CIS initiative to benefit from such resources and services, but simply need to be a member of the school population at large. Some examples of Level 1 resources or services include providing clothing or school supplies, assemblies, events, career fairs, field trips, health screenings, service-learning, and life skills classes.

Level 2 – Level 2 students are those who are case-managed by CIS Student Support Specialists and receive more than one CIS service or resource weekly. These students have been identified as having risk factors that can lead to dropping out of school. Level 2 students are those who are tracked for progress in the areas of promotion, graduation, grades, school attendance and behavior, and teen pregnancy rates. A needs assessment is completed with the parent/guardian of each Level 2 student, and a case plan is developed with the student. CIS staff members also provide direct services including mentoring; pregnancy prevention services; life skills lessons; and case management including assessment, goal setting, crisis intervention, information/referral, home visits, and tracking of progress. These services are brought into the school, where they can have a daily and direct impact on the students.