The SAFE project: community-driven partnerships in health, mental health, and education to prevent early school failure.

This article presents a case study of an innovative school-based health and mental health project that prevents early school failure in one county in Oklahoma. Success is attributed to social work development of broad-based partnerships involving families, schools, communities, and public policy officials. Citizen-driven, these partnerships have meshed previously fixed institutional boundaries in health, mental health, and education to prevent early school failure. The article describes school-family partnerships that form the core of the project's service intervention model. Statistics on service activities and outcomes are presented, along with a discussion of lessons learned for implementation of the project.