About Us
The School Health Assessment and Performance Evaluation (SHAPE) System is a public-access, web-based platform that offers schools, districts, and states/territories a workspace and targeted resources to support school mental health quality improvement. SHAPE was developed by the National Center for School Mental Health (NCSMH), in partnership with the field, to increase the quality and sustainability of comprehensive school mental health systems. SHAPE houses the National School Mental Health Census and the School Mental Health Quality Assessment (SMH-QA). These measures are designed for team completion at the school or district level to document the school mental health system components, assess the comprehensiveness of a SMH system, prioritize quality improvement efforts and track improvement over time.
Our Mission
The SHAPE System is hosted by the National Center for School Mental Health (NCSMH) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The NCSMH is committed to enhancing understanding and supporting implementation of comprehensive school mental health policies and programs that are innovative, effective, and culturally and linguistically competent across the developmental spectrum (from preschool through post-secondary), and three tiers of mental health programming (promotion, prevention, intervention).
The mission of the NCSMH is to strengthen policies and programs in school mental health to improve learning and promote success for America’s youth.
From its inception in 1995, the Center’s leadership and interdisciplinary staff has promoted the importance of providing mental health services to children, adolescents, and families directly in schools and communities.
What is the National Quality Initiative?
The National Quality Initiative (NQI) is an effort of the National Center for School Mental Health (NCSMH) in partnership with the School-Based Health Alliance (SBHA) to advance accountability, excellence, and sustainability for school health services nationwide by establishing an online census and national performance measures. The SHAPE System serves as the portal by which comprehensive school mental health systems can access the census and performance measures, as well as obtain customized school and district level progress reports and useful resources to improve system quality and sustainability. The School-Based Health Alliance hosts a similar portal that invites school-based health centers to access their respective census and performance measures via Quality Counts.
Funding support for the development of The SHAPE System comes from the Behavioral Health Administration via the 1915(c) Home and Community-Based Waiver Program Management, Workforce Development and Evaluation and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), Division of Child, Adolescent and Family Health, Adolescent Health Branch of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
