Through its partner agencies, the Kentucky Center for School Safety will provide training in best and promising practices with regard to supporting students, teachers, and other school and community providers. Training content will be organized in terms of a multi-level model of intervention. This research-based model has been widely used in public health, but only recently has it been applied to the social sciences, including social services, education, mental health, social work, and law enforcement.

Universal intervention strategies focus on enhancing existing protective factors in schools and communities and are intended to prevent individuals from falling into risk. Such interventions are applied to all individuals in a population (e.g., all students in a school building) through the efforts of all staff.

Targeted intervention involves activities that provide support within the school setting such as mentoring, skill development, and assistance to individuals who, because of their demographic or behavioral characteristics (e.g., poverty, history of disruptive behavior), are at risk. The purpose of targeted intervention strategies is to prevent further occurrences of problem behavior and/or negative coping strategies. These interventions focus on specific problems of individuals for whom universal intervention strategies have not been effective within the school setting itself.

Intensive intervention targets individuals with serious problems and attempts to minimize the effects of their condition within daily functioning. These strategies typically include the involvement and coordination of the educational setting with outside agencies that provide for coordinated planning of multi-agency involvement.

Targeted Intervention
Focus is on providing support within the school setting to individuals for whom universal intervention strategies have not been effective (e.g., implementation of systematic instruction in social skills for a group of students who exhibit poor or inappropriate interactions with peers or adults).

Universal Intervention
Applies to all individuals in a population through the efforts of all staff. The focus is on prevention. A school-based example of a universal intervention is a school-wide focus on positive student discipline (e.g., adopting school-wide behavioral rules and supporting students in following them).

Intensive Intervention
2 - 3% of children

Targeted Intervention
5 - 15% of children

Universal Intervention
80 - 90% of children