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
To address the daunting behavioral and mental health needs of Kansas' rural and underserved communities, Telehealth ROCKS (Rural Outreach for the Children of Kansas) Schools project partnered with school-based health centers, school districts, and special education cooperatives to provide a range of telebehavioral health intervention services and teletraining. This project used the Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) telementoring framework to connect specialty providers with school/community providers for web-based continuing education and case consultation to support students with special education needs. Our team created Function Friday for Better Behavior ECHO series to address challenging behaviors in schools, based on the concept of functional behavior assessment and function-based treatment. Part of the ECHO series occurred after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article describes how our ECHO series provided an effective mechanism for supporting school and community providers during the pandemic, and participating educators utilized skills as they transitioned from onsite education to the virtual learning environment with students.
ABSTRACT
To address the daunting behavioral and mental health needs of Kansas' rural and underserved communities, Telehealth ROCKS (Rural Outreach for the Children of Kansas) Schools project partnered with school-based health centers, school districts, and special education cooperatives to provide a range of telebehavioral health intervention services and teletraining. This project used the Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) telementoring framework to connect specialty providers with school/community providers for web-based continuing education and case consultation to support students with special education needs. Our team created the Function Friday for Better Behavior ECHO series to address challenging behaviors in schools, based on the concept of functional behavior assessment and function-based treatment. Part of the ECHO series came into being after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article describes how our ECHO series provided an effective mechanism for supporting school and community providers during the pandemic, and participating educators utilized skills as they transitioned from onsite education to the virtual learning environment with students.
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)