Telehealth has been a game changer for many being able to access psychological services. In our practice, we still encourage face to face sessions and find that often, this suits our young clients. Sometimes we do have young people who see us over telehealth alone, when it is not possible to come into the clinic. Other times, it is a helpful backstop when timing or illness makes attendance at the clinic difficult. We have found it to be a great way of ensuring continuity in therapy despite illness or sometimes tight schedules of young clients or parents.
On these occasions, it is helpful to consider a few things first such as: is the child going to be able to engage with the psychologist over telehealth? Sometimes, particularly with young children, making the adjustment to telehealth may be difficult. In some cases, it may be a useful opportunity to have a parent involved or indeed a parent session as an alternative. However this needs to be considered with caution – it is not automatically going to be appropriate for a parent to effectively attend in place of their child, particularly without the child knowing.
Obviously, age and maturity have a big role to play here and whether the parent and psychologist speaking without the child may damage the child or teen’s trust in the therapy process and rapport with the psychologist. Typically, we would always seek a teen’s permission and thoughts about having a session such as this, to understand what they may want to keep private and what they would be happy for the psychologist to share. This is also considered with pre-teen children and therefore it is important not to assume that it would be ok to come ‘in place’ of your child.
Another consideration is whether there is a quiet and private space that the child or teen can have the telehealth session. In a therapy room, the door is closed, there are no distractions and we are able to have a young person’s undivided attention (mostly!) Our clients are also appropriately dressed (as are we) and we are not in overly private spaces, but rather an office that is reasonably neutral. The same should go for where you or your young person attends a telehealth session. We recommend that they access the session via a computer (rather than a phone) that is sitting on a flat stable surface (perhaps a desk) and is positioned such that the young person is not in bed and has clothes on as if they were coming into the clinic. We also suggest that they leave their phone, tablet or other toys (other than comfort toys if appropriate) away from the area for the session and that they are able to close the door to facilitate them being able to speak freely to the psychologist (unless the child and psychologist request to have a parent join). These may seem like obvious things, but they can sometimes be overlooked because families are busy or may not really give too much thought to the structures around a telehealth session because it is not something they have had to think about before.
We are keen to encourage our families to consider the option of using telehealth when they need to, we hope this article has provided some useful guidelines to consider. We know this may be particularly pertinent with flu season looming and knowing that many of you will experience some unexpected illness that may get in the way of therapy. With telehealth as an option for some of you, don’t forget to ask our admin team if this is something that would be appropriate in yours or your child’s situation.