The Crisis Prevention and Response Team was established to provide prevention, intervention and support services for students and staff in the Buffalo Public Schools. 

Our mission is to empower our school staff through planning and training by consulting with schools to develop their capacity to meet students' emotional and mental health needs during and after a crisis.

A crisis is defined as an emotionally significant event, the impact of which overwhelms the usually effective coping skills of either an individual or a group. A crisis is often a sudden, powerful event that is outside of the range of day-to-day human experience.

Preventive and Responsive Services 

In terms of crisis prevention, the Crisis Prevention and Response Team (CPRT) is responsible for identifying and providing supports and services to our neediest students and families. We are working toward establishing district-wide policies that are relevant to crisis preparedness and response, overseeing their implementation at the school level, arranging training of school-based SST and staff, and maintaining district-level connections with community-based agencies and consultants. Your assigned team member will coordinate the sharing of resources among school-level teams and oversee the implementation of the school crisis response plan across schools within their assigned zone.

The following preventive services are offered by the Crisis Prevention and Response Team (CPRT):

• Community-based referral resources
• Case consultation
• Professional development (see link for a menu of trainings offered) 
• Parent training
• Classroom guidance

In terms of crisis response, we assess the social and emotional health of students and staff after a traumatic event has disrupted their ability to participate in the school environment. Our role is to assist schools in regaining stability in the wake of a crisis by supporting students and staff members experiencing loss, grief or trauma. Furthermore, the Crisis Prevention and Response Team supports the school administrators’ efforts to manage the many details associated with the response to a crisis. Trends that appear in crisis situations over the school year are analyzed and incorporated into the research and development of our current preventive measures and tools. This contributes to directly our constant and continued professional development in order to meet the ever-changing needs of our students.

The following responsive services offered by the Crisis Prevention and Response Team:

• Crisis intervention and referral resources
• Short-term crisis counseling
• Postvention best practice consultation and resources
• School-community linkage

During a real-time crisis, our goals are as follows:

1. Clarify and stabilize the crisis
2. Mobilize resources 
3. Return to normalization of routine for as many as possible, as soon as possible
4. Restore adaptive functioning
5. Facilitate healing and access to ongoing help for those inneed