001okay good evening everyone thank you for tuning good evening everyone thank you for tuning in this evening for our town hall on mental health tonight we're going to focus on the topic of anxiety and depression and we have some great um providers that are going to share some very important information with you i like to start off just by introducing myself my name is yolanda hamilton i am the diversity equity and inclusion consultant with the grapple heights school district and at this time i would just like to take a moment to introduce the members of the garfield heights city school district team that are joined with us during this dialogue this evening we have dr i'm sorry we have our superintendent mr chris hanke we have our director of student and pupil services dr gordon
002dupree we have our family civic and engagement coordinator miss gino wilson and we have our fabulous director of technology miss sherry bailey and so um in the event that you experience any technical difficulties just feel free to refresh your youtube we are streaming live on youtube actually if you have to step away from the meeting we encourage you to also review the replay because we understand that things may come up during the course of the meeting at this time i would like to allow mr chris hanke to share some pertinent updates to us regarding some school district news thank you ms hamilton and thank all of you that have joined us to watch this important town hall um we know that uh there's a lot of challenges out there right now and we're we're happy
003to uh uh bring you something uh that deals with uh mental health issues uh that do affect uh a lot of us uh uh in the community and at large um just briefly and again uh this isn't really for tonight but i just wanted it for planning purposes for parents um we are heavily leading toward um uh being fully remote through the semester which is january 22nd i'm going to make a final determination uh on monday evening at the board meeting so please tune in to that but b please plan for that we do we don't see the numbers of covet infections going down all that much but they are leveling a bit uh and we i do want to get some input from the quahog county board of health who meets with all the
004superintendents uh on fridays uh so um we please uh tune in on monday at 6 p.m uh to our youtube channel to watch our our board meeting uh for that and for other uh obviously other other pertinent information thanks ms hamilton thank you so again um my role tonight is to moderate this conversation we encourage you to actively engage with us you can utilize your chat to submit questions directly to um to the district and we'll make sure that we try to get to as many questions as possible and at this time we are going to go around and have introductions of our provider i would like to ask if each person in 30 seconds or less can share um their name their agency affiliation and either your mission statement or the brief synopsis of
005the services that you provide so we'll go for um i'll call you out we'll start with if you could um if you all could unmute your mics and i'll start with i believe um mirrorboard good evening everybody thank you so much for having me i'm amira board and i'm a clinical supervisor at applewood centers we are based on west 25th however we have school-based services and we service garfield heights maple heights richmond heights as well as several cmsd schools in our services we provide individual therapy family therapy we provide case management services as well as skill building services we also offer groups to the children that work with us and consultation to any child staff or parent who just needs some extra assistance thank you lynn good evening everyone lynn franks from ohio guidestone i'm
006community counseling supervisor in our school-based program at ohio guidestone we do provide school-based services in the garfield heights city school district we also provide outpatient counseling if anyone in garfield is familiar with the derby building we have an office there we in-home services substance use disorder counseling psychiatry and then also consultation predominantly right now all of our services are virtual so when i say in home and outpatient it is virtual though thank you we'll go to michelle michelle harris from catholic charities and our my program which is tapestry is a wraparound process which works with the entire family the child is the identified client and we provide cpst or tbs depending on the license of the staff and we work obviously in home when we're able everything's virtual right now but providing um family voice
007and choice identifying needs and helping the family to be able to develop more natural supports thank you rebecca i am a social work intern at welfare homeless and missing youth program we provide support to youth children and families that are dealing with homelessness and that are missing from their families welfare also has like 29 other programs that i'm sure karen can elaborate on okay karen hi yes this is karen thanks rebecca um we have the program for homeless and missing youth we want to make sure that everybody is aware of our 24 7 hotline which is two one six five seven zero eight zero one zero and we also have a lot of social media and we know that that's been really supporting a lot of youth and families right now and the link for
008that is at help in the cle so please you know like those and we share resources that can hopefully support your family or um they're around employment food resources but belfair's here to help and we have that 24 7 hotline to try to bring in these missing and homeless kids great jessica hi my name is tamika tucker i'm the director of program operations for big brothers big sisters of greater cleveland we provide mentoring services for children ages 5 to 15 in cuyahoga county okay my apologies again for the audience tamika tucker okay um we'll go to matt hi my name is matthew corbett i'm from beach brook um we have one therapist in garfield and one qualified mental health specialist who provides tbs services um the basic difference between the the two services that we
009provide is one is individual therapy and one is tbs i describe it as um the the therapist works on what's going on on the inside of the kid and the tbs worker kind of works on what's going on on the outside we also offer medication management services through our extra nurse and ihbt therapy for intensive in-home based family therapy so okay and i think sarah may have stepped away but we'll give the opportunity um for her to share during the course of the program so i'd like to start the okay i see sarah's log back in we'll give her the opportunity to share as we go into the dialogue so the first question that i wanted to um pause is sort of twofold and around the holiday time we know that just the stress around
010not being around families this year and other um difficult things that people may be facing around this time of year just with the stress and knowing that the pandemic adds another layer of stress around that how can a person know if they themselves or someone that they love are dealing specifically with depression and anxiety what exactly does that look like and i ask that question because oftentimes people just kind of are used to going in the motions going through their regular routine and not really being um aware of the signs that they may be experiencing depression or anxiety so i would like to pose that um first i'll ask if maybe amira can address that and then if there are any other agencies that would like to chime in we can um you can feel
011free to add to that my name is an a yeah change my name so i'm not first well depression and anxiety it looks different for different people and i think that's that's one of the thing i i wish it was kind of a cookie-cutter answer because that would make it super easy and simple and say if you look a then that means you're depressed or if you look b then that means you are anxious and none of that is the case it looks very different for different people for children a lot of times you see a lot of irritability i call it kind of general sadness the blahs maybe they're not doing activities that they would normally do so if you have a child that says love video games and play video games and now
012they're kind of like uh i can take it or leave it i really don't want to play that might be a red flag to say hey this kid is not participating in things that he he or she would normally like to participate anxiety um generally speaking can be considered you know extra worry really worrying about things that's happening and it's to such a level that it begins to interfere in your day-to-day activity so if i'm a person that might be dealing with some anxious thinking then i can't focus on my schoolwork because i'm so worried about a particular subject or is interfering in my friendships or in my ability to just do normal everyday things um but it really does vary what we like to tell some of our parents that if you have a
013concern let's talk about it reach out to somebody it doesn't have to be what i call the big ticket item so it doesn't have to be something that's so huge that is unmistakable if you see something in yourself or your child that looks just a little off just reach out for help and let you know the person that's helping you kind of take a look and see how we can best um assist thank you so i'd like to actually ask matthew if he can add to that so um to amira's point it looks different with everyone but knowing you know with beach beach brook and working with um younger kids so let's think about like preschool or elementary what are some of the the signs or things that you know smaller children might do that
014demonstrates that they're dealing with depression or anxiety because i know that um you know as adults we we might see those signs like to amir's point being a little bit um reserved not wanting to be around individuals maybe having one day where you're feeling up here in the next day feeling a little low but in kids we know that that's sort of manifest in a different way so what are some things that you would suggest that parents look out for specifically like for the preschool and elementary populations um i think i would recommend that they they look out for any type of extremes kid just doing things outside of the norm doing things more than they usually would or a lot less than they usually would um a lot of kids will go um unnoticed
015when they're depressed because they're not causing any problems they comply with all the requests and they just go along with whatever happens and whatever's happening around them and they don't put up a fight they don't they don't complain they just kind of show up and they're there um so we accept that and we go as adults oh they're fine there's nothing wrong with this kid he's always here he's participating you know when i ask him a question he answers but they don't they're not enjoying themselves that you don't see any expressions of joy you don't see them engaging in fun activities you don't see them doing all the fun things you would expect a kid to do cracking jokes making fun of people all that kind of stuff you did as a kid you know
016it's just not happening so i think you know if there's a lack of playfulness a lack of spontaneity and they're just doing things maybe more than they used to they're eating more um sleeping more those kinds of things can be indications of depression or another attempt to deal with anxiety um some people sleep more people they cope with by sleeping um kids will just go to sleep to avoid problems or thinking about problems yeah thank you for that because i saw an article and it was talking about the different language that younger kids use so they can't say oh i'm just so stressed out but they might say can you come play with me and being aware of like those type of ways that they're trying to communicate that hey i'm feeling a little overwhelmed
017and i just need a you know a break or i need someone to attend to me um so the next part of this question is to what extent is feeling anxious or sad normal like when do you know the boundary between whether or not you should be reaching out to someone so i'll allow i'll act um direct this towards lynn of ohio guidestone so i would say you know when it starts are you in ready i would say when it starts affecting different areas of your life that it wasn't affecting before so if um you know a student was you know an ab student and all of a sudden they're getting you know b's and c's or d's um you might have an indication that something go is going on there or if um you
018know a student was involved in all kinds of different extracurricular activities and then you know they're withdrawing or they were hanging out with friends a lot um or even you know doing social media a lot with friends you know or texting a lot and then that you know decrease i would say those are you know indications or also um you know having behavior outbursts that maybe they didn't have before so um those are things that i would look for to say well might be a good idea to reach out for some help okay thank you so and thinking about just in general again going back to like the anxiety depression stress different things occurring during that during the holiday season specifically you know because people are triggered by different things and i know that you
019know youth have a different way of processing emotions processing feelings and it's interesting to know that you know the services that karen mentioned that belfair offers for youth and specifically homeless youth and so we know that even within our district we do have a population of students that are experiencing homelessness or families that may be facing homelessness so can you just share a little bit karen about the the type of supportive services and i imagine that michelle um with cleveland catholic charities they would also provide support maybe for families or youth that are experiencing homelessness or um are are homeless yes so with um belfair we go in or meet the youth where they're at so you know with covet it's become very challenging because now the libraries are closed we can't see kids face
020to face at school so there's so many barriers so um it's just you know what we do is we listen we assess their immediate needs and link them to ongoing more long-term services like many of the agencies that are on this provide intensive in-home uh making sure that they do have you know access to the internet so they can do these services from home there's just so many barriers and so many things that we need to be assessing and asking so our families and youth will be succeeding um but yeah so what we do is you know we talk and check in with people a lot of kids are struggling and just see that their parents or that their grandma's really overwhelmed so they don't want to bother them and we try to help them
021see that they're not being a bother we care about you they care about you you gotta let us know if you need help speak up use your voice so empowering them to ask for help is a huge part of the step to getting them the help that they might need so they can get tbs or individual counseling so they can build these skills so they can be more successful and michelle so in my program the wraparound process the family is assigned a care coordinator and that fam and that care coordinator links the family to services so if they need um if the child needs individual therapy needs to see a psychiatrist um the one thing about my program that's really unique and is a real benefit is that we do have discretionary funds so a
022lot of times if families are struggling with um not being able to pay the rent or struggling with utilities i can assist with um those specific things on a one-time basis because what we want to do is empower families to make a sustainability plan and not to be reliant on us but we do have some families that have been dealing with homelessness and between the care coordinator and sometimes a family advocate if they're assigned we'll work with them to try and locate housing look work with all the different resources that are around kyle county to get that family out of homelessness we've had some families in shelters we've had to meet them there but to try and get the family as stable as quickly as possible no that's great so it's good to know that
023you're able to address the immediate need for those experiencing homelessness but also helping them to work towards self-sufficiency and that's a very needed support um for those families so i want to just go to the chat i see that we have a question from the audience stating my child is a teen i thought that some of this was normal i'm assuming they're speaking of behavior how do i know when it is a problem and when i need to reach out so i'll throw that out to the group and whoever would like to address that what anyone i'll actually just piggyback off of what lynn already said is that if you see extremes in behavior so if your child is sleeping more or eating more um or the opposite extreme they're no longer doing the behaviors
024that they normally would that would be a red flag and a good indicator to at least get them assessed to see where they are okay great and i see um before we go to the next question um the representative from the nancy laurie agency um i know that you are having some technical difficulties if you like to chime in and introduce yourself um your role and maybe share briefly what the nancy laurie agency provides that would be great at this time and you'll need to remove your mic off of mute um where do i remove that you're you're on now we can we can all hear you can hear me now yes oh good okay i'm sorry i have had some technical difficulty um anyhow my name is nancy lowry um i started nancy lowery
025and associates many many 25 years ago um a good number of years ago i realized that children uh so many many many children were never going to come to an office like ours or other offices and so the idea was to try to actually bring what we do in the office uh to the schools now this is actually a behavioral health mental health private practice so the clinicians come in and they actually [Music] diagnose or assess diagnose and treat okay that's that's what we do and it's been quite quite helpful and successful and we work well with all everybody in the school because we're all there to try to help the children uh grow up to have a good life thank you thank you for being here so we'll continue on with our theme of
026questions um another question from the chat what would happen if we don't get help so what would happen if we don't seek out help would it would our with the problem become go away um would it get worse i think i think we hope it will fall down and hopefully it will get better so that again that is a question slash comment coming from someone in our listening audience um is that anyone to answer how are you working how do you do that yes so nancy feel free if you would like to respond to that question and we're talking about adhd correct anxiety adhd depression okay um what often happens with with children with as an example adhd is they uh they have they they don't have a good sense of self there's there's something
027uh that tells them that they're not keeping up with others uh they're usually by the way they're usually quite bright but they get a bad rap and so the fact that they're not focusing when other children are focusing and they're not paying attention or they forget their work or all the many things that happens uh they actually their self-esteem is poor they gravitate towards children uh who are also having problems um they they actually grows up you you don't this doesn't go away you grow up uh then you run into a lot of impulsivity these children make uh bad decisions they they make decisions before they think about it they think about the decision later um it causes marital problems of work problems so without it causes these problems yeah thank you okay so i'd
028like to shift a bit oh i'm sorry i see amir you would like to respect i just wanted to add really quickly because i was reading the question um it doesn't have to be a thing that's a long-term diagnosis it is okay to seek help for shorter term adjustments or transitional things the person who asked the question spoke specifically of covet and i think what we all are seeing is because of the pandemic there are a lot of people experiencing so many different feelings lots of depression lots of anxiety which in light of a pandemic is absolutely typical and to be expected it doesn't have to be a long-term theme if you are feeling a certain way and it's a short term it's okay to still seek some assistance we can um the providers can
029work with work basis to get you through or i call it over the hump whatever that thing is for the parents out there please don't think that it has to be this long drawn out issue that you've been having it can be a relatively new issue and it can still um get some assistance so that's a good point because i think sometimes for people that have been in the practice of reaching out for help they might be aware like at this certain time of year i start feeling this type of way every year maybe it's due to an issue with grief maybe a loved one passed around this time of year maybe it's just that they don't do well with coping around the holiday so i think that that's a very important point that you
030mentioned thank you for that now with tamika big brothers big sisters is a little different but what are some ways that you would be able to support kiddos that maybe their family hasn't reached out to the agency or not sure about reaching out to the agency to support them around having anxiety or depression but maybe they're just saying hey we just need someone to interact with our kid maybe help to boost self-esteem or to have someone to talk to um that maybe may not be a clinical professional can you speak to how big brothers big sisters would be able to support some of the families in our district in that way and you're still on mute okay i'm sorry about that um mentoring really really matters i mean mentoring for um our our kids we
031we refer to our children as littles and we've referred to our volunteers as bigs and so mentoring is it's just another friend it's not just another friend but it's a it's an extraordinary friend someone that will walk alongside of the child someone that will share um you know similar interests and just be a listening ear someone that is not mom or dad someone that is not going to you know stole them for feeling a certain way or doing certain things someone that is going to you know do tick tocks with them and you know um dancing contests and all different types of stuff video games fortnight whatever they like to do that big brother or big sister will be there for the child and meet the child where they are and so we have found
032that a lot of our um littles have experienced depression um this this year and we also found that as soon as we find um the child the little um a big brother or big sister it changes everything why because now that that little has someone special of their own someone that they can call anytime they want someone that they know is going to call them someone that they can depend on to really talk to and talk through their problems with so mentoring matters especially during a time like this and i can't stress enough that our agency will do our very very best to get every child matched as soon as possible and then i think the last thing is the is the fact and it's a really good thing that we have volunteers knocking at
033our door this this year we have more volunteers than ever this year and so that makes a big difference because it was a time where we had more littles than we had digs and so now we have a lot of bigs waiting just waiting and ready um to be a friend to a little for a lifetime and what are the ages so to be enrolled in our program you have to be five to 15 years of age but you can stay in our program and two you the child can stay in our program until he or she graduates and so right now we have a child that is you know and still plugging away and doing the very best that she can and so she's still in our program um in our program basically what
034we do is we provide support we we provide guidance um you know give ideas suggestions on how to um continue to engage and and just really be a part of the liberal's life that's great so um as you all heard you know starting as young as five it's very rare that those opportunities are open to individuals that are in um the kindergarten bracket and so it's great to reach out um to explore that as a resource i want to go to another question in the chat and um what the question is what is about what is the best way a mom with adhd can deal with her four kids that have adhd is home counseling available so i'll just post that out to the group for those that provide the counseling support and services one
035of the things i would suggest for that mom is routine and structure it's really really important that that those children as well as mom know exactly what's going to happen every single day and that includes i know weekends can be a little different than weekdays we get that but to try to keep things as consistent and structured as possible and also to try to just spend time interacting with the kids playing a game and i know the kids may be different ages so that may make it a little more challenging but to try to find ways to at least engage with those children individually and as a group you know throughout sometime during that day so those will be that would be my suggestion okay great would anybody else like to chime in yeah one
036of the programs we have at belfair is called pact parents and children together and it's short-term therapy for parents and children to learn how to um kind of create a toolbox together for managing different problems that are in their lives and i think um it's that would be helpful if should someone is looking for counseling the therapist can work with them on zoom or come to their home depending on the circumstances and depending on the therapist and um help them figure out different solutions and it could be six weeks or whatever and they figure out what they need they work together so it's figuring out what works for all of them together as a family okay really great program that's great so we've been sharing some great information and i hope that those of you
037that are tuning in stay with us um please continue to engage with us by submitting your questions in the chat and in moving forward um we want to like keep these as interactive as possible we know that um virtual platforms help bring us together but we're also still so far apart and so we want you the listing audience audience to stay engaged with us and at this time i'm going to put a few of our providers on the spot they didn't necessarily they're not aware of this i see you all smiling like what does she have going on i thought that it would be great to maybe have a little interactive role play because i think that sometimes there's an anxiety around even picking up the phone or sending that first email and the anxiety
038behind like what happens next right because we know in the community there's just a misconception when it comes to the topic of mental health and the stigma around it so i thought hey it might be great if we could just um role play a scenario that can fit for any family no specific family um in the district these are all hypothetical situations that perhaps some families in our district may be experiencing and so um yes i would like is everyone up for that challenge okay i didn't see matthew shake his head beetrook isn't up for that challenge okay i'm just i'm just kidding so we'll go ahead and go into some of the role-playing scenarios and um i had asked for miss wilson to participate as well in one of those but um i'm gonna
039how this will work is i'm going to read a scenario and we can imagine that i am the person in the scenario and then i'll pick an agency to engage with okay how does that sound okay so some people may feel anxious about reaching out for services and during the lab meeting last month we did debunk some of the myths about odjfs being involved if someone were to reach out for support and so that was really great to know um that just because someone reaches out for support they are not going to be in the system quote-unquote right and so we were able to alleviate that however in this particular scenario let's imagine that we have a single mom who was recently dismissed from her job due to colbit and with the holiday being on
040the horizon she is very concerned about meeting the basic needs for her family for the past week she has noticed that she has been very tired no appetite and is stressed because she can't leave the house due to social distancing so during this role play i am going to pose as that single mom and i'm speaking with you the provider and asking specific specific questions so i want you to engage with me the way that you would is if i were a real client coming for that type of support okay so i'm thinking um because um apple would if you if you provide the services for adults can you just do so by raising your hand okay so adults dealing with family issues okay so michelle will go with you okay you ready yep hi
041my name is yolanda hamilton i'm calling because i tuned into the great youtube town hall put on by the guard for high city school district and i'm just really experiencing a difficult time right now i was recently released from my job due to covet and we just don't have income coming in as you know it's close to the holidays and i've just noticed in this past couple weeks since i've been dismissed for my employer i'm just really feeling a little i don't even know have the words to describe it but i'm so concerned because it's so close to the holiday how are we going to pay our bills i don't even know how i can even go grocery shopping just because money is really tight so i'm i'm reaching out and i'm hoping that you
042could provide me with some type of support or direction sure so my program specifically wouldn't be able to help you but catholic charities is a large agency that has lots and lots of different programs and so it sounds like you could benefit from some of our emergency services um situations with bishop cosgrove so we would give you that number they can help with um rent payments utilities um they could talk about food pantries there also is um but st philip near i is our employment and training facility that um works very closely with families that are trying to locate you know work again need to work on job you know job interviewing skills resume building those kinds of things so i think there's a lot of different services we'd be able to connect you to
043michelle i think one of the barriers that i've been experiencing before i call catholic charities is that when i call these agencies i'm on hold for a very long time and it just adds to the stress and the frustration of trying to access services is there any way that catholic charities can help and directly support me because it's like i'm dealing with the stress of my kids i'm dealing with the stress of not being able to meet their needs and then being on the phone and being put on hold and not necessarily being connected with the right individuals how can you support me with that so what i'll do is i'll take your i've got your name but i'll take your phone number and i'm gonna actually link you up with some people that i'm
044going to have call you directly so that you're not frustrated with waiting online you know waiting for somebody to call you back or waiting you know waiting for um on the phone for a long time so i'll give it to a specific person that'll reach out to you okay so thank you for being the brave one to be the first person to volunteer great job and i love how as you so for those in the viewing audience you see that um you have to be able to clearly ask for what you need right and so we know we all know we have probably called to have customer support for different issues this is no different and it can add to the stress and be stressful when you have to be on hold with individuals for
045a while before we go to the next role play scenario um i want to go into the chat and let's see were there any new questions i don't think that i'm seeing any um oh okay so someone asked how do you find out if your child has adhd so that's another question that came up in terms of um maybe going for an assessment or diagnosis can um can someone speak to that i would say that before um you know any child or adult begins services they do have a diagnostic evaluation so a provider would be able to give you that idea of where they thought um you know the the child would go regarding a diagnosis okay okay so and again we are going to have a list of resources that are available in terms
046of the contact information the name of the agency that will be available after um this meeting you can reach out also to dr dupree at any time or miss wilson and they can also help to guide you in that referral process to the preferred agency or the agency that has um the services that are most appropriate for your situation or circumstance correct is that correct gina and dr dupree okay yes i would like to also add that that parent may want to start with their pediatrician and talk to the pediatrician about what they're seeing because sometimes they can give evaluations that the teacher and the parent can fill out they can start to help the parents see if they should seek mental health treatment as far as getting a diagnostic assessment and therapy and things
047like that so another place to start right okay so this is a scenario um specifically about seeking out support for a child so who would like to be the next person to volunteer to engage in the role play with me matthew you had how okay matthew come on girl let's do it let's do it thank you for being a good sport so the scenario is um a father and mother are noticing that their child's behavior has changed the child has been struggling to keep up with assignments and just having a challenging time with virtual learning um gets easily frustrated and the parents are really concerned that their child is struggling emotionally and they we just don't know they just don't know how to handle this and they're very reluctant to seek out help in the
048first place but because of the fear of the perception that they're poor parents and that they have poor parenting skills in terms of how they are handling the situation so um i'll start off by i'll start it off hi um matthew i'm calling because i saw the youtube town hall and i must say i'm a little re i'm really having some anxiety around this conversation i mean i've heard about beach book i don't want people to think that my kid is crazy or you know is going through um needing psychiatric help and i i hope that's not the case scenario but i just wanted to reach out to you because you know my husband and i are noticing that we're really concerned about our child's um behaviors and just thinking i don't know like he
049just seemed so different than what he was around this time last year and i just wanted to reach out i don't even know if you can help me or what you know what beach book can offer but you know i worked myself up to give you a call because this is the second time that i saw you on the town hall and i just felt that maybe i should reach out to beach brook well i'm really glad that you did and it sounds like it wasn't easy for you um i it sounds like you're having a normal nervous kind of reaction and you're kind of worried about what you're seeing at home with your child it seems to be maybe it's out of the norm than what you usually see and you're a little concerned
050and you might feel like you don't know what to do because you've never seen this type of behavior before or these type of symptoms before or just your kids never talk to you this way before and maybe you're not happy with the relationship um if that's the case um we do have services that um can assist you we provide mainly two different types of services individual therapy [Music] and tbs our therapists work can work one-on-one with the kids and they can also work with the entire family around the kids problems to identify if there's a mental health diagnosis that the kid may be um exhibiting and we can diagnose that and then we can offer treatment options um if you want us to come what type of treatment well treatment as individual uh therapy well
051we have a lot of jargon in the business but basically we do we do family therapy and individual therapy and then we also provide tbs okay so matthew you said therapy and in my family you don't go talk to a therapist so unless you so can you break that down for me so that i can really understand what is going to take place if you are suggesting that we need therapy like what does that even mean uh that means i would meet with uh the child and i'd meet with you sometimes i would meet separately sometimes i'd be with you guys together i would get um i would uh develop an understanding with you guys about how you perceive the problem from each side and then i would try to try to work with you
052guys around coming up with common solutions but similar problems basically um what we do is we go in and we listen to the kids and we listen to the parents and then we then we we try to help them communicate to each other what what's going on because many times kids will feel very reluctant to talk to their parents they parents um can get in a mode sometimes with being very critical and always demanding things and you know parents have been very stressed out lately so it can be hard to just spend time with your kids having fun building your relationship and doing the kinds of things that um get them to talk to you and open up and um so maybe if they're not feeling like they can't they can openly discuss things they
053maybe they feel like they need somebody else they can do that with we provide that option and and we also try to um help parents build skills so that they can work with their kids issues so we do psycho-education about if a kid's suffering from say adhd symptoms and they're very hyper how do you manage that what do you do with those kind of behaviors um if a kid is suffering from depression how can you help them um things like that so we kind of we do it we we assess what's going on and then we try to help the parent and we work with the parent to develop solutions based on what the kids struggling with so thank you matthew for clarifying that because my perception of therapy is somebody's sitting there with their
054glasses down like this taking notes about everything they think is wrong with me and what you just explained is that it's more conversational to help me with tools to be successful in communicating and building a stronger relationship and i think that that would be very helpful to my family sort of like having someone to mediate and bridge gaps in communication and help us with tools to be able to manage those emotions so thank you so much i'm not sure yet if i'm gonna call you but this this conversation has been very helpful and is it okay if i reach out to you for further conversations oh absolutely anytime anytime okay so that's great i didn't feel pressured like i had to make a decision at that moment he was very willing to break things down
055in plain language for me so that i could understand because to his point there's a lot of jargon and sometimes when you hear those clinical terms if you don't have that type of background understanding it can be very intimidating so we have um just a couple of brief scenarios just to engage some of the other providers but i'd like to go to another question in the chat and the question is i do not have insurance can i still be seen i'm a parent of three and all three are online this is very frustrating for me because i don't know how to help them i feel overwhelmed who can i call i know my kids can feel my energy meaning the frustration so are these agencies still seeing are you still seeing people even without insurance
056and if not what are some supports if they can't self-pay then i'll go to you yeah and i'll speak um because matthew was brave to do the role play i know that this goes for his agency as well because he talked about this uh the last time um and i don't know about amira if she has the funding also but our agencies get funding through the atoms board to it is a limited amount of funding to where we could see students about six times um for consultation so you know we can kind of you know help you as amira said earlier in a different situation get over that hump so if you're noticing your student and your child could use some additional supports we can provide that if you don't have insurance okay great and
057the other question was what does the acronym tbs stand for therapeutic behavioral services it encompasses a lot of it encompasses a lot of different activities you can do um therapeutic interventions from evidence-based approaches which means you can take techniques that are used in therapy and use them with the kids and not be a therapist so i can help a kid examine his thoughts and say well what were you thinking when you did that you know or i can come up i can work with the kid on behavior modification plan with the parents and the kid um develop life skills um a lot there's a lot of activities that you can do under tbs to help with the kid to manage their symptoms not only at home but out in the community okay great and i
058just jump in real quick too we like to say sometimes it's the skill building arm of what we do um because i haven't explained it a lot lately um we do use a lot of letters in our in our field but to break it down even more the tbs part is building the skills so matthew mentioned you know learning the coping tools being able to learn anger management skills doing some of those therapeutic functions although you don't have all you know for our staff you don't have all the letters behind your name for you all as the people that we're helping you don't care about any of that you just want somebody to help you be able to deal with and manage your child's behaviors for your children to be behaving appropriately in school and
059at home to that end is the skill building part where we break down um coping skills anger management behavior modification which is basically just changing behavior from negative to positive behaviors um and helping in that way so just wanted to add that okay and before we go into the next scenario with our we have about 10 minutes left i wanted to post this to the nancy lowry agency in terms of the behavioral um support services what are some of the services that you're actually offering in a virtual format to um like support with but with both providers just mentioned tbs are there any other tools that your agency also provides to support those that are dealing with children with adhd or other type of behavioral um health issues and i just um you're you're muted
060am i yes okay hear me now yes okay thank you um we have there's about 33 clinicians that are working uh virtually with various schools and um tell me exactly your question again so what type of um support or tools for behavioral support or tools are you offering to students in a virtual format or do they are you still seeing patient um students or families in person most are not mostly mostly it's virtual and occasionally if it's a very severe case and we follow the cdc guidelines uh you know we will see someone in person but uh as of now most of it is is skype um they they're they're able to you know i i never think it's as good as it is in person um uh but the clinicians are doing well the
061children are getting a lot out of it um they have tools that they use they've got um you know they have the child respond we also talk with the parent to you know make sure because the parent also has to know how to handle a child with adhd which they said earlier was a structure and then they need to have short-term consequences but the child is able to do things online and still show the therapist what they've done and also the ability to feel free to talk about what makes them angry and what makes them upset because a lot of the time it's because people including their parents don't really understand what it is so then we try to also work with the parent on a different skype time where we're able to help them
062to understand all how they can also help with the coping skills okay so it's sort of like a two-fold approach which is which is good that can be separated over two sections with one focusing specifically on the child and the other with the adult that's great thank you nancy for um sharing that and i just wanted to go really quick there's another question that came in the chat um can you help parents with those and this is a question for anyone in the group can you help parents with those skill building tools or do you just help kids so i think nancy just stated her specific agency provides um help for both but um that was particular i'm sorry that was a question that came when matt and amir were speaking about tbs so the
063short answer from applewood and i think i can speak for a couple of the other agencies is that the child is the primary client so essentially what that means is we would open the case under the child's name but because it's so important um for the whole family system we do work with the parent and the family system so what tends to happen is we may have individual therapy with the child but we also provide family therapy and that's the time we get mom dad grandma care provider siblings involved in the therapeutic process we also with that tbs that matt and i were talking about that skill building we do that with the child with the child and the parent and with the parent to help them to understand um what we're teaching their children
064in ways that they as the parent and the head of that family system can implement those things into their homes so while we're working with the child about listening skills and expressing our anger we're simultaneously working with the parent on setting boundaries creating structure in the home following through with the appropriate consequences for negative behavior it's a partnership so although we don't open a case under the parent's name at least at applewood we do work um in partnership with those parents okay great great okay so um for our next and probably final scenario due to time i wanted to direct this to karen and to rebecca um and we won't necessarily do role play but i'll give you a scenario there's a family that has students in garfield heights and they have been concerned about
065another friend that the student has and the student um has shared you know that their family is kind of private and doesn't really want to disclose the hardship that they're having and so the student has been you know alluding to that they might run away because they feel like their parents are might lose their home and so how would you respond in terms of engaging that with that family that may be facing homelessness yolanda i'm so glad that you called the hotline today so we hear that you're concerned about a friend and that they're a little reluctant and that's very normal it's very hard for us to you know ask for help especially when we're really stressed out and overwhelmed so we can try to have a session with um you know do you think
066yolanda that the family would be okay with me calling and just exploring different resources that we could offer them i think they would be open to it um i think the reluctance is just kind of like the fear of embarrassment that it's happening okay do you welcome the opportunity for them to have um a friend such as myself be a part of that conversation to encourage them to work with you yes yolanda i was just going to say that the first thing is that everything is very confidential so we would review that and make sure that the family understood that as well so would want to talk to the mom and just make sure that she knows that we're here to support her and then if maybe the teen would be feel more comfortable with
067his peer there supporting them we could have like especially right now with um using zoom so much we could zoom with lots of people so we want the team to be comfortable and feeling their support from their identified support system so if they say yeah be really helpful if my friend could just sit on the call that's fine if the mom gives permission for that and we would have to just you know have a release sign for that just so everybody's rights and confidentiality are respected but you'll end up so glad you care so much about your friend and this family that you call today and i'll be glad to follow up with them and i really appreciate that you called and karen thank you for that and you know we were actually considering having
068them come over to do the zoom but because you know they're having an issue where they don't have internet connection and i'm not sure like what their situation is you know um if they're facing homelessness i don't know that you know they have the resources or tools to be able to even access a meeting virtually if they choose to follow up with you on their own how can you still offer them some type of support if they may not have the technology to reach out to you during this time yes yes yolanda we would for sure start with a phone call we know that many families right now are struggling with internet access and even having their phones on so we could we do based on the situation still go out into the community so
069we would go practicing social distancing we would bring masks if needed for the family so they would not need to worry and still intervene and try to offer support just looks a little different because we're in a pandemic but we're still here to help and we're still very concerned and again i'm so glad that you're calling to advocate for your friend okay so thank you you are all good sports and i i hope that this was helpful in guiding um the listening audience to know how to feel empowered to reach out and what to expect and we have a question that has come into the chat which i'm going to direct um directly to ms wilson and dr dupree and the question is you know how does a parent start the process and who should
070they reach out to in the district to access these services uh parents can begin by speaking with any school person uh that they're comfortable with and if they are they can call uh mrs wilson they can call me they can talk to anybody in the building and that person will tell the parent how to proceed from there miss wilson has a a contact list of of all people who can help with parent concerns mr wilson can you address that yes yes absolutely um if you anyone is interested in any services or just have questions and don't know where to start um again just like dr capri stated you can reach out to anyone that you're comfortable with but my line is always open as well if you want to just contact me and ask for
071a specific service or you just don't know where to begin i will be willing to work with you we can you know go over some things together and i will be sure to direct you and guide you whichever way you would need to be and i think um i've just as gordon mentioned i have contacts of all of the agencies that we work with um and we will we will be sure to find the best fit for you okay so i want to take this time as we conclude thank you to all of the providers for making the times to engage with the families in our district and sharing such important information to those in the listening audience we know that um it can be a difficult time around the holidays and i encourage you
072as you make a commitment to practice self-care and to take care of your mental health please reach out to the resources um to dr dupree or ms wilson or anyone in the district that you're comfortable with we are here to support you we are here to make sure that you have access to the services that you need we don't want you to feel as though you need to go through this um time during the pandemic by your on your own there are resources and supports out here um we do care about you we are great at um communicating in real time to the best of our ability and so with that being said i want to thank you for tuning in if you check out the garfield height city school district website um the addresses
073are listed for various staff members but if you would like to reach out to our family civic our family civic and engagement coordinator specifically miss gina wilson her email address is the capital letter g last name wilson so g w i l s o n at g h bulldogs dot o r g and so you can feel free to even send her an um an email also phone number two one six seven seven 777-2279-216-777-2229 did i get that correct and i just want to encourage everyone to have a safe and happy holiday continue to practice social distancing wear your mask and hopefully we will get to this sooner than later but we are bulldog strong so thank you so much and have a good evening thank you