mySHO · SEL360
Public Safety
Where law enforcement fits in a school mental health program — and the two places Michigan law already puts you there.
Shawn — this is a draft, not a published page. Nothing here is committed and nothing is being asked of River Rouge. Tell us what's wrong, what wouldn't survive a shift, and what we've assumed that isn't true. The specific things we want your eyes on are at the bottom.
The short version
SEL360 is a mental health and social-emotional learning program that runs inside schools. mySHO delivers it, and it is billed through public and private insurance rather than a school budget line.
Most of what a school mental health program does never touches law enforcement. Two things do, and both are already written into Michigan practice — one a state protocol, one a statute. This page covers those two, plus one idea that does not exist anywhere yet and needs a working officer's read before it goes further.
1. Handle With Care
A notification, not a referral. Michigan already runs it.
An officer encounters a child at a traumatic scene — domestic violence, a shooting, an overdose, a house fire, a death in the home, a serious crash. The officer sends the child's school a confidential notice carrying the child's name and three words: handle with care. No incident details. The school gets it before the next school day and adjusts how it handles that student, without asking the child what happened.
The state's implementation guide addresses this directly: the notice shares only publicly available information, so it does not require permission. Consent is required separately, and only before a child receives mental health treatment. Notification and treatment are two different things with two different rules.
Michigan has funded a statewide Handle With Care coordinator since 2018 inside MDHHS, with an advisory committee since 2019. The implementation guide, the notification form, the referral form, the parental permission form, and sample agreement language are already written and published by the state — nobody has to draft them. michigan.gov/handlewithcare
The protocol requires three partners: the school, law enforcement, and a mental health provider. Where SEL360 is already running in a district, that third seat is filled — the notification has somewhere clinical to land instead of stopping at a counselor's inbox.
Read the state program page2. The resource card
The part that doesn't exist yet. This is the one we most want you to poke holes in.
Handle With Care tells the school. It gives the household nothing. The idea is to add one thing: a card with a QR code that opens optional, self-directed support content matched to the kind of incident — something the family can use tonight, not in six weeks.
Who gets it
Never the child. The card goes to the parent or guardian, and to the school.
| Route | Who receives it | Why both |
|---|---|---|
| Officer, on scene | Parent or guardian present at the incident | The adult who was there gets something concrete before the shift ends. |
| School, next day | The building contact who receives the Handle With Care notice | Reaches the household when no adult was available, when the parent is the subject of the incident, or when the officer's hands were full. |
If the department doesn't want anything added to a live scene, the school route alone delivers the whole thing. That's a real option, not a fallback.
Scanning the code doesn't tell us who the child is, and it doesn't create a record that a named child was at a named police incident. That's deliberate. Sensitive data created on the worst night of someone's year is a good reason for a department to say no, and we'd rather not build the reason.
Optional, self-directed support. Not treatment, not a clinical encounter, not a diagnosis, not a substitute for care. No one in the country has run this, so there is no evidence base for it — which is exactly why it should be judged on whether it works, not on how it sounds.
The closest thing to precedent is in Michigan. In April 2026, Crime Stoppers of Flint and Genesee County launched "Rights, Resources, and Support" — QR codes on posters and magnets in police departments, linking to a database of about 400 organizations, anonymous by design. It's placement-based rather than officer-issued, but it's a Michigan law enforcement QR-to-services program that already works.
3. The juvenile diversion screening requirement
MCL 722.823, as amended effective October 1, 2024.
Under Michigan's Juvenile Diversion Act, when an offense by a minor is under investigation and no petition has been filed, a law enforcement official may release the minor to a parent and discontinue, divert the matter by agreement, or file or authorize a petition.
Since October 1, 2024, the middle option carries a precondition. A minor must not be diverted by agreement unless the officer receives the results of a risk screening tool and a mental health screening tool, conducted by a designated individual or agency trained in those tools — and uses those results, with the best interests of public safety and the minor, to inform the decision.
Minors accused of a specified juvenile violation cannot be diverted at all, and the screening requirement doesn't apply to a minor already under court or state supervision. Diversion agreements run no more than three months unless extended for a documented treatment program.
| SCAO-approved instruments | Type | Certification |
|---|---|---|
| MJJAS / OYAS-DIV | Risk | Required |
| YASI — Pre-Screen | Risk | Required |
| YLS/CMI Short Form | Risk | Required |
| CAFAS | Mental health | Required |
| CANS | Mental health | Required |
| MAYSI-2 | Mental health | Not required |
| PSC — Pediatric Symptom Checklist | Mental health | Not required |
SCAO Juvenile Justice Screening and Assessment Tools Guidelines, August 2024, effective October 1, 2024.
The Pediatric Symptom Checklist — on the approved list, no certification required, published free by Massachusetts General Hospital, with a youth self-report form, a parent form, a pictorial version for limited literacy, and translations in more than 25 languages. It covers ages 6 to 17. Delivered on the platform, it can be completed in minutes and returned to an officer as a structured result.
PSC covers the mental health half. It does not cover the risk half, and all three approved risk instruments require certification. Anyone telling you they can supply the whole screen is wrong. We'd need a certified partner or certified staff for that half, and we don't have one yet.
The state guidelines are silent on whether a private agency can hold the "designated individual or agency" role, and silent on remote or platform administration. Silence isn't permission. We don't know how Wayne County handles this and we're not going to guess — which is why question 2 below matters more than anything else on this page.
Read the Juvenile Diversion Act (PDF)4. What happens to a student who reaches us
SEL360 has three tiers. A referral doesn't go into a queue.
All three are delivered on SEL360 and billed through public and private insurance. A school doesn't have to fund a referral, and neither does a department.
5. Why the wait matters here
MDHHS publishes quarterly performance numbers for every prepaid inpatient health plan in the state. For the quarter ending September 30, 2025:
| Indicator | Detroit Wayne | Statewide |
|---|---|---|
| New children receiving a completed assessment within 14 days of a non-emergency request | 55.59% | 64.65% |
| Starting an ongoing service within 14 days of that assessment | 90.99% | 71.71% |
Read both rows. In one quarter, 278 of 626 new children in Wayne County waited more than 14 days for the assessment alone. But once a child is assessed, Detroit Wayne starts service faster than the rest of the state. The bottleneck is the front door, not the follow-through.
That's the gap the resource card is aimed at — the stretch between the night an officer is standing in someone's living room and the day a clinician is available.
And what the state's tip line surfaces
OK2SAY recorded 10,777 tips in 2025 across 26 categories. The top three — other (anxiety, stress, depression, harassment) 1,816; suicide threats 1,767; bullying 1,576 — total 5,159, or 47.9%. The four weapons categories combined — guns 149, planned school attack 265, weapons possession 50, explosives 32 — total 496, or 4.6%.
Two things are true at once. Most of that behavioral health volume routes to a principal, not an officer. And 41 weapon-related incidents were resolved through the system in 2025, alongside 57 life-saving interventions — not a small thing. But the tips that do reach law enforcement skew acute, and whichever door a case goes through, the person on the other side hits the same wall.
MDHHS PIHP performance indicators, FY25 Q4. Michigan State Police, 2025 OK2SAY statistics. Percentages calculated against the stated totals.
6. Not built yet
Listed because we'd rather say what isn't finished than imply it is.
Pre-arrest diversion protocol. Requires a credentialed provider in Michigan and a resolved answer on who may serve as the designated screening entity. Neither is finished.
Certified risk screening. We have no certified capacity for the risk half of the statutory screen. Court or county partner, or we pay for certification.
Reentry handoff. Enrolling a youth returning from placement or court supervision into SEL360 as part of the transition plan. Depends on county juvenile court relationships not yet in place.
What we're asking
Thirty minutes. No presentation, nothing to sign. Three questions:
- When one of your officers has a low-level juvenile incident today, what actually happens to that kid?
- Where does a juvenile go for the risk and mental health screening MCL 722.823 requires before a diversion agreement?
- Who would have to say yes for a written protocol with the school district to exist?
And on this page specifically
- Does the resource card survive a real scene, or is it one more thing that gets dropped?
- Officer route, school route, or school only?
- Is there anything here that would make a director or a city attorney say no on sight?
- Anything we've assumed about how River Rouge works that isn't true?
If after that you think the whole idea is wrong for River Rouge, tell us and we take it off the table.
Talk to us
A.J. Pasha — President & Chief Operating Officer
ajpasha@mysho.me · 952.220.4922
Terry O. Williams — Chief Executive Officer
terry@mysho.me
Sources
Every legal reference and figure here comes from a public source. Check any of it.
- Michigan Juvenile Diversion Act, 1988 PA 13, MCL 722.821–722.831; MCL 722.823 as amended by 2023 PA 287, effective October 1, 2024. legislature.mi.gov
- State Court Administrative Office, Juvenile Justice Screening and Assessment Tools Guidelines, August 2024. courts.michigan.gov
- MDHHS, Handle With Care Michigan — program page and implementation guide. michigan.gov/handlewithcare
- Massachusetts General Hospital, Pediatric Symptom Checklist — all versions published free. massgeneral.org
- MDHHS, Michigan Mission-Based PIHP Performance Indicator Report, FY25 Q4 (July 1 – September 30, 2025). michigan.gov
- Michigan State Police, OK2SAY program and 2025 tip statistics. michigan.gov/ok2say
- "Rights, Resources, and Support" — Crime Stoppers of Flint and Genesee County, launched April 2026. wnem.com