ABSTRACT
School-based telebehavioral health is one avenue to increase students' access to mental health services, especially for students who are less likely to access traditional community mental health settings due to a lack of transportation to distant sites, financial resources, and other barriers. With the shortage of child behavioral specialists in Kansas' rural and underserved communities, the Telehealth ROCKS (Regional Outreach to Communities, Kids, and Schools) program was created to address student behavioral health needs at school through telehealth. Since 2018, this program has provided approximately 1,600 mental health appointments. With public health mandates and a shift to online school, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid telehealth transition from services in rural supervised school settings to direct-to-consumer services in homes. The authors describe the challenges and opportunities experienced during this transition across telebehavioral health specialties: (a) developmental/autism assessments, (b) developmental behavioral interventions to address problem behaviors, (c) child and adolescent psychological services, (d) medical complexity services, and (e) child and adolescent psychiatry. The authors then describe the overall transition from school-based to home-based services based on national Guidelines for Evidence-Based Child Telebehavioral Health domains: Patient Appropriateness, Crisis Management/Safety, and Logistics/Administrative Protocols. This experience and lessons learned can inform other school-based telemental health programs considering expansion to home-based services. The authors also discuss evolving telehealth policy and the reimbursement environment, with continued relevance due to continued COVID-19 outbreaks impacting school services and future public health emergencies affecting schools. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) Impact Statement This report shares lessons learned when rapidly transitioning the Telehealth ROCKS rural telebehavioral health services from the supervised school setting to the unsupervised home setting during the COVID-19 pandemic to meet escalating student behavioral health needs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
School-based telebehavioral health is one avenue to increase students' access to mental health services, especially for students who are less likely to access traditional community mental health settings due to a lack of transportation to distant sites, financial resources, and other barriers. With the shortage of child behavioral specialists in Kansas' rural and underserved communities, the Telehealth ROCKS (Regional Outreach to Communities, Kids, and Schools) program was created to address student behavioral health needs at school through telehealth. Since 2018, this program has provided approximately 1,600 mental health appointments. With public health mandates and a shift to online school, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid telehealth transition from services in rural supervised school settings to direct-to-consumer services in homes. The authors describe the challenges and opportunities experienced during this transition across telebehavioral health specialties: (a) developmental/autism assessments, (b) developmental behavioral interventions to address problem behaviors, (c) child and adolescent psychological services, (d) medical complexity services, and (e) child and adolescent psychiatry. The authors then describe the overall transition from school-based to home-based services based on national Guidelines for Evidence-Based Child Telebehavioral Health domains: Patient Appropriateness, Crisis Management/Safety, and Logistics/Administrative Protocols. This experience and lessons learned can inform other school-based telemental health programs considering expansion to home-based services. The authors also discuss evolving telehealth policy and the reimbursement environment, with continued relevance due to continued COVID-19 outbreaks impacting school services and future public health emergencies affecting schools. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) Impact Statement This report shares lessons learned when rapidly transitioning the Telehealth ROCKS rural telebehavioral health services from the supervised school setting to the unsupervised home setting during the COVID-19 pandemic to meet escalating student behavioral health needs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Students with disabilities (SWD) are participating in supplemental online programs (SOP) and through the provisions of special education must receive specialized instruction to meet their academic potential. These students have a group of individuals, including educators, specialists, school leaders, and their own parents, collaborating to implement learning accommodations for them to support their academic success. This group is known as the Individualized Education Program Team (IEP Team). Without accommodations to the learning environment and to their learning activities, the academic achievement of SWD may be adversely impacted. The IEP Team must collaborate to create an effective Individualized Education Program (IEP) that is specially designed for their target student in the student's current educational placement. Special Education Directors (SED) are central to the functioning of IEP Teams as they support SWD in SOP. This relationship, and the resulting provision of special education services, has not been thoroughly researched. The purposes of this mixed methods study were to identify the needs of SWD in SOP, to identify the processes used by IEP Teams to support SWD in SOP, and to determine how those processes meet the needs and support SWD in SOP. The first phase of research was a quantitative online survey of SED followed by a second phase of qualitative semi-structured interviews of selected participants which more fully elucidated current student needs and IEP Team processes that address those needs and support these students. Findings include a confidence in the established IEP Team process and in special education staff, concerns over the ability of special education staff to support or accommodate SWD in online courses, the perception that the needs of SWD in online educations settings are different than those in face-to face settings, the perception that the SED give significant guidance to IEP Teams while allowing them independent function, and the use of the Covid-19 related increase in online learning to identify ways to better serve SWD online. This research suggests IEP Teams return to the IEP Team meeting and to the familiar process through which to do the requisite work to support SWD in online educational settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)