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Expert Advice Amid School Closures From Presence’s TelePractitioners

Offering guidance and support as you change your service delivery model and transition services to students’ homes.

What a challenging time this is—for districts and schools, teachers, SLPs and OTs, school psychologists and social workers, students, and their families. School districts are struggling to move quickly to support their students amidst unprecedented school closures. Special education teams are transitioning to ensure their students continue to receive the services they need. Our clinical team has been very busy, sharing their knowledge, insights, and best practices to help districts make the best decisions and get their staff up to speed quickly to transition services from in-school to in-home.

On March 23, PresenceLearning’s Clinical Director, SLP and OT, Kristin Martinez, MA, CCC-SLP, hosted the first two hours of a marathon 7-hour Teletherapy Bootcamp, sponsored by SpeechTherapyPd.com. Kristin’s session, “Welcome to Teletherapy! Essentials and Best Practices for School-Based/In-Home Service,” provides a detailed overview of everything needed to serve students in-home with teletherapy. Kristin emphasizes how teletherapy isn’t a new approach—it’s just a different modality to deliver the services that therapists already know how to deliver. And at this time in particular, teletherapy is an equalizer to bring quality therapy to everyone who needs it. She explains in detail how teletherapy works to deliver synchronous direct therapy, and she discusses in depth the special circumstance today of providing teletherapy in the home.

A few of the many topics Kristin covers:

  • Regulatory considerations including IDEA, state regulations, licensure, and insurance/Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement
  • Technology and access from the therapist side and student side
  • Working with a parent/guardian as support person
  • Home-based service considerations
  • Participating in and Conducting IEPs and staffing meetings remotely

Also on March 23, PresenceLearning’s Clinical Director of PsychEd Services, Stephanie Taylor, Ed.S., was a panelist in the webinar “When One Door Closes and Another Opens: School Psychologists Providing Telehealth Services,” hosted by NASP. Stephanie shares best practices for providing telehealth services when school buildings are closed. She addresses everything from bandwidth requirements, setting up your environment, considerations for the student’s environment, connecting with the student and your school team, and getting the results you want. Other topics include assessing and determining students’ needs, documenting and keeping track, collaborating effectively with your team when working remotely.

And on April 2, PresenceLearning Clinical Account Managers, Rachel Morris, OTR/L and Tricia Castellan, OTR/L, shared their expertise in the COVID-19 & OT series by the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA). Their presentation, “From Onsite to Online: Addressing Students’ Needs Through a Telehealth Service Delivery Model,” described the benefits of telehealth and demonstrated how to mitigate barriers to online interventions, evaluations, and collaborations. In addition, Rachel and Tricia worked with course participants to identify methods for providing direct intervention, classroom observation, evaluation, and consultation through a telehealth service delivery model, including modification of an onsite activity to online application. You can view the webinar here (please note: you’ll have to go through the check out process but there’s no cost to watch the recording).

Leveraging 10+ years of experience and 2.5 million sessions served, PresenceLearning can help you provide the continuity of services that your students need, now more than ever. In addition to seamlessly transitioning our current PresenceLearning providers to in-home delivery of services, for the first time ever, we have opened up access to our clinical experts and award-winning teletherapy platform to help school-based clinicians deliver great online service to homes too!

For schools interested in partnering with us, click here to learn how we’re supporting schools during closures and schedule a free consultation to speak with one of our School Partnership team members.

For providers interested in learning more about career opportunities with PresenceLearning, click here to learn more.

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