The Students Support System through Coordination of Services Team (COST) in Alameda County, California: As an Advanced Model of the Cooperation between Schools and SBHCs
2018 Volume 28 Pages 91-109
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2018 Volume 28 Pages 91-109
School-based health centers (SBHCs) are health care facilities, literally what the name implies, locating on school campuses in the United States. The distinctive feature of SBHCs is that they can provide comprehensive health care services (e.g. primary care, mental health care, dental health care, health education, nutrition education, and behavioral health care) to students on-site. It is expected that such SBHCs give an important suggestion on surveying the way of school health care of our country’s future as it can be the one of influential model for more closely and more effective cooperation between schools and school health institutions.
However, although SBHCs are located on school’s site, they are totally different organizations from the schools. Therefore, it is essential to obtain the consent both the students and their guardians when the school and SBHC staffs exchange mutually personal information of the children, based on two federal laws; the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). It becomes very important that schools and SBHCs build an appropriate and effective system to cooperate while getting over such a certain “barrier” in order to demonstrate the maximum capacity of SBHCs.
In this respect, in Alameda County, California State, the coordination of services team (COST) has been adapted since 2005 as the original meeting system of schools and SBHCs cooperation. This COST is a framework of sharing information and action to adjust the services provided by various human resources (school staffs, SBHC staffs, other external leaders, and so on) effectively. The biggest purpose of COST is to support academic achievement and healthy development of children, so COST members discuss and adjust services for students who have educational and medical needs, and follow-up the progress after the services are offered. And now COST has been spreading out not only other areas in California such as Los Angeles but also outside the state in America. Hence, in this paper, I attempt to (i) outline of COST from the analysis of RTI as its theoretical background and to (ii) examine the practical side of COST as one of the prominent system of the cooperation between schools and SBHCs.
