Health and Behavioral Health Archives - Page 5 of 5

Our Work Continues: School Based Mental Health Services still Mitigating Crises

For over 150 years, The New York Foundling has worked in partnership with our neighbors to ensure that everyone can meet their full potential when facing challenging situations. This hasn’t changed, and our staff continue to provide life-changing and meaningful support in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This series shares how The Foundling’s many programs are responding to the needs of their community.

The Foundling’s School Based Mental Health Services team embeds staff within partnered New York City public schools to identify and address the individual mental health needs of students. Trained staff work with the school to develop and monitor intervention plans for in-school counseling as well as provide referrals out to community-based services.

The program works to educate families about emotional wellness while identifying children and teenagers in need of mental health services. In each partner school, staff aim to promote engagement with families, establish physical environments that encourage participation in services when needed, create processes that facilitate prompt referral, and incorporate evidence-based treatment practices.

Launched in 2014, the School Based Mental Health Services program is based on a growing body of evidence showing that an integrated focus on academics, health and mental health services, social services, expanded learning opportunities, positive youth development, and family and community supports are critical to improving student achievement. Schools that utilize this approach are often referred to as community schools.

In the face of COVID-19, our dedicated clinicians and support staff are adapting, so they can provide the same level of services to young people, their families, and the school community.

As of April, the School Based Mental Health Services team has provided Telehealth treatment to 212 students and families, 277 therapeutic sessions, and helped schools respond to six community member mental health crises. Unsurprisingly, these statistics are on par with our impact when schools are in session, demonstrating the team’s adaptability as well as the essential nature of the program.

Last year, the School Based Mental Health Services program served approximately 1,000 kids across its 30 partnering elementary, middle, and high schools. “We are in every New York City neighborhood except Brooklyn, which we hope to expand into,” notes Assistant Vice President Elizabeth Tremblay.

Assistant Vice President Bonnie Loughner, who oversees the program alongside Elizabeth, adds: “We are there to help the greater school community meet their students’ social-emotional and academic needs. If any kids are starting to rise to the level of depressed or anxious, we’re there to teach them skills to work through their symptoms.”

Should a crisis situation arise, the School Based Mental Health Services team is ready. When the pandemic began, Elizabeth and Bonnie sat down with their team to assess how their crisis response might change. “We’re following the same procedures as before, but instead of it being in-person, it’s all done via Telehealth now,” Bonnie explains.

“It has been exciting to see the clinicians and youth adapt to telehealth,” Stephanie Riley, a program supervisor, expresses, “the staff have been so open and creative in trying new engagement strategies such as scavenger hunts and incorporating them into therapy.”

Crisis cases typically involve self-harm or suicidal thoughts. In those situations, the program’s staff are the school community’s first responders. “Pre-COVID-19, the student would be brought to our assigned rooms at the school for a full, in-person assessment,” Elizabeth says, “But the advantage of having to do that assessment by video now is that we actually get to see the student’s home. That allows us to work with the family and create an even better safety plan—one that’s tailored to the student’s specific home situation in that moment.”

But mental health doesn’t just exist in the therapy room or on video conferences. The program also works closely with the PTA and school staff to bring mental health resources and awareness to the broader school community, including workshops for students, parents, and teachers. Workshops focus on topics like mental health stigma, behavior management in the classroom, identifying suicidal ideation, and anxiety management techniques. “All our workshops are done virtually now,” Bonnie says, “We’ve also pre-recorded staff trainings for teachers to use.”

Before COVID-19, the program staff would also conduct classroom observations and work with teachers to incorporate social-emotional learning into the classroom. Though this is now difficult, staff have had many teachers contact the program to manage their own stress and to learn how to better support students during this time.

Despite the many challenges posed by the pandemic, recently, the team launched a new partnership with The Foundling’s charter school, Haven Academy. The new initiative will bring the evidence-based model, Incredible Years, to Haven Academy scholars. Used in other elementary schools served by the School Based Mental Health team, Incredible Years is designed for 4 to 6 year-old children, and uses puppets and roleplaying to teach academic and social-emotional skills like sharing and persistence.

“We’re using video vignettes and roleplaying scenarios via videoconference,” Bonnie explains, describing the evidence-based therapeutic interventions they provide. A version designed for parents has similar content, but it teaches the parents how to apply those lessons with their 6 to 12 year-old children at home. Both groups last approximately 16 to 18 weeks, encouraging families to create healthy households where mental health concerns are destigmatized.

“Overall, we’ve seen increased school engagement,” Bonnie says, “School staff and administrators were harder to track down before, but now that everyone is working from home, a lot of schools are having weekly meetings with us. Pre-COVID-19, those meetings were only taking place once, maybe twice a month. It makes me really hopeful for the future that we are setting new expectations for more regular meetings and communications.”

To learn more about how The New York Foundling is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York, visit our emergency response page. Stay tuned for more stories from the frontlines as we continue to support our neighbors on paths to stability and strength.

May 15, 2020/by Elefant Design

Blog, Health and Behavioral Health

How The Foundling Works to Spot and Support Students in Crisis

How can teachers and school administrators support their students who are undergoing trauma or a crisis? Last week, our very own Bonnie Loughner, Assistant Vice President of our School & Community Impact Program, lent her expertise to a panel discussion dedicated to the topic.

Spotting and Supporting Kids in Crisis, hosted by the Robertson Center at Success Academy on February 27, brought together experts in the behavioral health field to speak about how school personnel can identify children and adolescents that are experiencing trauma, employ strategies to address these challenges, and ultimately build a school community that is supportive, caring, and welcoming to all students.

The Foundling does this in a variety of ways: our School-Based Mental Health program works within New York City’s public schools to provide behavioral health services in-school for students that need it, our School Response Teams in Staten Island and Brooklyn provide effective mental health training to school staff, and our on-site mental health clinics increase access to vital care.

This work has real impact – the number of crises in the schools we serve has gone down by approximately 40% in the past three years!

At the panel, Ms. Loughner was joined by Jacob Ham of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Stephen Powell of the National CARES Mentoring Movement, and Peter Brown of Success Academy. The panelists spoke about effective methods of spotting and supporting struggling children, as well as how educators can find and access resources for outside help to promote the best outcomes for their students.

As Ms. Loughner discussed in her recent guest post on The Incredible Years® Blog, parents and teachers are often unaware of the signs of mental health issues and how best to respond to them, which can prevent children and adolescents from getting the help that they need. As children spend over 943 hours a year in school, providing teachers with effective methods to provide support can be transformational.

Thanks to the efforts of Ms. Loughner and the rest of our Health & Behavioral Health team, we are supporting children and adolescents in building the groundwork for a lifetime of good health, wellbeing, and self-determination. We are excited to continue to provide this important support, training, and assistance to educators and students across New York City.

March 5, 2020/by Elefant Design

Health and Behavioral Health, Media Coverage

The Incredible Years Blog: Shift of Crisis to Prevention in New York City with the use of Evidence-Based Models in Schools

Bonnie Loughner, LCSW, Assistant Vice President of our School & Community Impact Program wrote the following post, detailing the impact of using the Incredible Years® behavioral health program in NYC classrooms:

The New York Foundling is one of New York City’s oldest and largest social service organizations. With an internationally-recognized and interrelated set of research-backed services, we work in partnership with children, adults, and families who are working to create transformational change in their own lives.

The Foundling provides evidence-based and evidence-informed programs that focus on keeping families together, preventing abuse and neglect, providing academic support for youth, and giving people with developmental disabilities the tools and training they need to lead independent lives. We understand and know that inter-disciplinary evidence-based preventive interventions are crucial to increasing protective factors for children and families and lead to better outcomes in the long-term. This is notably true in an educational context with children spending between 943 to 1,016 hours a year in a school setting with learning continuing in their home (Pew Research Center, 2014).

In 2016, The Foundling partnered with Incredible Years® as a way to support children and families with social emotional development and parenting skills. We knew that the schools we served needed access to tested and effective preventive programs because we saw the amount of crises that were happening on a daily basis. We looked to Incredible Years, as well as other evidence-based programs, as a way to help shift schools to a more proactive mindset…

Read more at The Incredible Years ® Blog.

March 2, 2020/by Elefant Design

Health and Behavioral Health, Media Coverage

NYN Media | The New York Foundling Opens a New Mental Health Clinic in East Harlem

The Home of Integrated Behavioral Health will serve 200 families with children between the ages of five and 18 years old, according to a Jan. 14 press release. READ MORE

January 15, 2019/by Elefant Design

Blog, Health and Behavioral Health

The New York Foundling’s Home of Integrated Behavioral Health Opens Its Doors in East Harlem

The New York Foundling welcomed staff and community stakeholders to the opening of its new state-of-the-art mental health clinic in East Harlem, officially called the Home of Integrated Behavioral Health, on January 14, 2019.

“Our clinic ushers in a new way to approach behavioral and mental health,” said Bill Baccaglini, CEO and President of The New York Foundling. “At The Foundling, we consider family and community context in our approach to care. Our approach also takes a different view than others. We believe treatment should be brief, intense, and should equip all members of the family with the skills and confidence they need to confront what challenges lie ahead.”

The clinic, previously located in Harlem on the west side, will serve as a hub for families in the surrounding community, as well as across New York City, to access high-quality, evidence-based social and emotional mental health support and treatment. Like all New York Foundling programs and services, the mental health clinic aims to give families research-backed tools that set them up for healthy independence and successful futures.

“We know firsthand that the research-backed treatment models we will be using at the Home of Integrated Behavioral Health give entire families the tools they need to work through their challenges and be healthy in the long-term,” said Dr. Sylvia Rowlands, Senior Vice President of Evidence-Based Programs, in a statement.

The clinic staff will be using several evidence-based models, including Brief Strategic Family Therapy, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, while also launching the Communities that Care model.

The Foundling’s East Harlem location will also mean greater access for families in the community. Lack of accessibility can often be a barrier for low-income families to receiving effective mental health services.

“We at The Foundling are extremely privileged to be a part of the neighborhood filled with a strong sense of community ties and involvement,” Fanny Tristan, director of the clinic, explains. “Together, we can all use our voices to advocate for the needs everyone. A community that has created more community gardens than I can count on one hand. We are so excited to be here and look forward to providing great community mental health services.”

The 5,689-square-foot space, located at 109 E. 115th Street, aims to serve more than 200 families each year. Families with children up to 18 years old and their parents are welcome, and the clinic will accept referrals from school counselors, court services, foster care providers, community agencies, as well as walk-ins.

To learn more, visit www.nyfoundling.org or call 917-485-7280.

ABOUT THE NEW YORK FOUNDLING

At The New York Foundling, we believe that all people, no matter their circumstance or zip code, have the right to reach their full potential. But for all of us, discovering what we are capable of and reaching our full potential requires support along the way. The New York Foundling is built on that 150 year-old promise to our neighbors, in which infants and children, teens and college students, people with differing abilities and families can access the trusted support they need to thrive, independent of us.

From the bold beginnings of the Sisters of Charity in 1869, The New York Foundling has grown into a results-driven and research-backed organization, whose community support services have empowered hundreds of thousands of people to move beyond their most challenging times, and to achieve their goals. Our five core program areas touch on the key building blocks of a strong and healthy life: education, wellbeing, family, community, opportunity. Together, our interconnected programs provide a whole person, whole family and whole community approach that unlocks solutions for a lifetime.

January 14, 2019/by Elefant Design