OTS 150: Are OT Practitioners, Mental Health Providers?
- Jayson Davies
- May 20, 2024
- 48 min read
Updated: Dec 18, 2024
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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 150 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.
Abe Saffer and Dr. Miranda Virone are here to dive into the roots of occupational therapy’s involvement in mental health, uncover current challenges, and explore practical strategies for integrating effective mental health interventions in schools.
If you're looking to expand your impact and equip yourself with the necessary skills and knowledge to address these kinds of challenges, or are just curious about the evolution of school-based mental health strategies, this discussion is for you. Tune in to learn more!
Listen now to learn the following objectives:
Learners will identify strategies for advocating the role of OT in mental health
Learners will be able to apply strategies for integrating mental health interventions into their practice
Learners will be able to analyze the biopsychosocial approach
Guests Bios
Dr. Miranda Virone
Dr. Miranda Virone, OTD, MS OTR/L, PhD(c) is an Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy, Educational Consultant, and passionate advocate for youth mental health. She serves as the co-facilitator of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) School Mental Health Community of Practice, the AOTA representative for the National Center of School Mental Health Advisory Board and served as a co-author of the Pennsylvania Occupational Therapy Association School Based Guidelines.
Dr. Virone educates and advocates for occupational therapy’s role in school mental health by presenting at the state and national level, conducting and mentoring research projects, and leading student fieldwork experiences in school mental health initiatives.
Abe Saffer
Abe Saffer has over 15 years working in policy and lobbying, political communication, political organizing, and campaign management. He has established, maintained, and led successful coalitions on local, state, and national levels to educate and advance issues.
Abe possesses specialized skills in crafting comprehensive messaging and advocacy strategies tailored to ensure complex policies effectively resonate with a wide range of audiences. He has extensive experience in analyzing and drafting legislation. He has also been quoted in multiple publications, and has authored several articles and editorials. He has an ability to thrive in high paced and intense work environments.
Abe is currently a federal lobbyist for the American Occupational Therapy Association, lobbying Congress and the Administration on a number of issues, including: special and general education, early intervention, workforce, diversity and equity, health, appropriations, mental health, Medicaid in schools, and general disability.
Quotes
“I really think that we need to inject mental health and just about to every session like we can't just ignore mental health, it is really a backbone of every single thing that a child does”
-Jayson Davies, M.A, OTR/L
“OTs eligible in every single state as a mental health profession”
-Abe Saffer
“Our lens is so very different from everybody else's that if we can just build the courage to talk about it and feel comfortable and confident talking about it we can break down a lot of barriers.”
-Dr. Miranda Virone
“It's usually not a federal barrier that is preventing you from doing something it is generally if anything, it might be a state law. But more often than not, it's just people who don't understand what OTs is.
-Abe Saffer
“The biggest barrier that we face is misconceptions that have solidified that schools are so risk averse”
-Abe Saffer
“You need to be able to convince the administrator”
-Abe Saffer
“You can't assume that your school administrators know anything about ESSA there's a very strong chance that they don't… it can open up a lot of doors, it can open up a lot of conversations too”
-Dr. Miranda Virone
Resources
👉ESSA
👉IDEA
Episode Transcript
Expand to view the full episode transcript.
Jayson Davies
Hello and welcome to another insightful episode of the OT schoolhouse Podcast. Today we're diving into the critical integration of mental health and occupational therapy in the school settings. I'm your host, Jayson Davies and OT practitioner based in Southern California. And I really appreciate you joining us today. For our 100 and 50th episode, I wanted to address a topic I know so many school based OT practitioners have questioned in their careers, you probably have as well, and that is are OT practitioners, mental health providers, and if so, what does that mean for our role as school based OT practitioners? That's why today I'm excited to be joined by two distinguished guest, Miranda Varun, an Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy with a rich background in school based practice and mental health advocacy, and a returning guest to the show ape Saffer, a federal lobbyist for a OTA who focuses on school based work and pediatric initiatives. As you will soon find out Miranda and Ava are the perfect duo to be helping us out today with answering these questions, and they aren't afraid to tackle the tough questions that I throw at them. And this episode Miranda and Abe will help us to explore the historical roots of OT and addressing psychological components of trauma, the importance of using a bio psychosocial approach, and how we can effectively integrate mental health interventions into our everyday practice as school based OT practitioners. To go a little bit further, Miranda will share invaluable tactics for building rapport with teachers and obtaining the necessary buy in for implementing OT strategies within the classroom. While he will really dive into overcoming federal and local barriers to providing comprehensive mental health services and the schools, no matter your experience with implementing mental health services in the schools, this discussion will provide you with a deeper understanding of the challenges, opportunities and crucial roles that we play and fostering mental health in educational settings. Stay tuned as we unpack how you can support mental well being within occupational therapy. We'll be right back.
Amazing Narrator
Hello, and welcome to the OT schoolhouse podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development. Now to get the conversation started. Here's your host, Jayson Davies, class is officially in session.
Jayson Davies
Miranda and Abe. Welcome to the OTs schoolhouse podcast. How are you doing today?
Miranda Virone
I'm doing great. Thank you. It's sunny here in western PA. So I'm soaking that up a little bit. It's enjoyable.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, take advantage of it while you can. Right? Yes, we're hopefully getting a little bit of what the West Coast experiences more often. So it's looking good out there. But yeah, I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. I'm proud and glad and excited to be here and pursuing good company with ape. So it's all good. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm pretty sure the way that I first learned about yourself Miranda is actually through Abe, and we have Abe joining us from the DC area. How are you doing today Abe?
Abe Saffer
Good. How are you all doing?
Jayson Davies
Doing pretty darn well excited to talk about mental health and what it should look like? What it is what it actually can be? And how we can kind of merge everything all together between mental health and school based occupational therapy. Sound good?
Miranda Virone
Yeah, let's do it.
Abe Saffer
I can't wait.
Jayson Davies
Well, to get us started for today, I want to give you both a quick minute or two to kind of share where you are in the world of occupational therapy, how you fit into that. And Abe if you want to quickly share your responsibility, if you want to call it that in the world of OT go for it.
Abe Saffer
Yeah, so I'm the biggest fan of OT that is not an OT practitioner. I've been working for AOTA now for about seven and a half years or so. And I am one of their federal lobbyists and handle all of their, all of the school based work essentially for for the association. So that's anything pediatric is sort of in my portfolio.
Jayson Davies
Awesome. And that's what we're going to talk about ESA, ESSA talk about mental health with you, especially from that DC level, and then even at the state level as well. Great. It's great to have you here. And Miranda, what about you? Where are you in the world of occupational therapy today.
Miranda Virone
So I am currently an Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy and Occupational Therapy Dr. Program in western Pennsylvania. So that's where I spend the majority of my time but also do consulting on the side in public schools for OT, related and OT supported mental health programming using a tiered approach. I've been for about the past three to four years now. CO facilitator of the AOTA school mental health community of practice, we fall under the realm of the Mental Health special intersection and about two years ago I accepted a role on the advisory board of the National Center for School Mental Health out of the University of Maryland, a great group of individuals that are doing a lot of great work to advance comprehensive school mental health. And then at a state level, the Pennsylvania Occupational Therapy Association, we have a mental health task force that kind of encompasses the realm of school mental health as well, looking at state level legislation and advocacy efforts to kind of support this work in schools where we can on a state level. Oh, yeah.
Jayson Davies
Oh, wow. So you are ingrained into it both at the federal and the state side? And it also looks like or sounds like you're working with local districts, even with consulting or whatnot. So you're just kind of everywhere?
Miranda Virone
Yeah, I try to be just I, yeah, I caught myself mildly intrusive, fertilise stuff like because I, I kind of invite myself into those arenas, where I think that OTs should be and try to convince people why we should be there. So I find myself in some interesting meetings sometimes. But, you know, it's all part of the advocacy work that you have to do to get the word out and to take to take your profession to the places that it really should be.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and, you know, to be honest, I think any good advocate would say that you're right on target with that, like, you kind of have to be intrusive to be an advocate a little bit, sometimes that shoot from the hip and ask questions later, mentality gets yourself into a meeting, and then you get to figure out what you're doing once you're in the meeting. So yeah, just thank you so much for joining us. And really quickly, I do actually want to give you Miranda, just a quick moment to actually talk a little bit about your previous experience with school based occupational therapy.
Miranda Virone
Yeah, I was a school based practitioner for about 10 years in the State of Pennsylvania, during that time, direct services I provided. And then I kind of advanced to the point where I was supervising a group of five employees, we had four different school districts, we were providing services to small rural school districts. So there were pretty tiny, but all of the services that we provided to the students at the time, and the very beginning was, you know, strictly through IDEA services students that were identified with an educational exceptionality, we were providing direct support direct services that were, you know, sometimes they were billable services, that we also had a times a handful of students with 504 service agreements that we were providing services for as well. So really kind of under that umbrella of IDEA in the beginning and about five years into it, my interest kind of peeked into, you know, the mental health component of what we were doing with kids, you know, after seeing a lot of, you know, a lot of mental health kind of creeping into their daily routines and education, whether be regulation issues, or some situational stress or kind of issues. I thought, gosh, you know, we need to address this, this as part of what we do. And at the time, and the schools that I was working in, there were really no other services with the exception of school counseling, to provide those types of interventions. And, you know, they were being done more on kind of the universal level, but not necessarily targeted, or intensive approaches. So, you know, I just started digging around seeing what was out there seeing what available supports or things that were already existing and practice and hooked up with Su basic, which, you know, is kind of notorious in the world of positive mental health and OT, right.
Jayson Davies
Yeah.
Miranda Virone
Just from there just took off and went running with the concept of yeah, this is what we do. And if anybody's ever talked to sue, she's incredibly empowering. She'll make you feel like you can ride a unicorn to the moon, So.
Jayson Davies
Yep, yep, definitely no, Sue. Well, she's been on the podcast. And she's actually speaking with our OT Schoolhouse collaborative membership very soon. So always excited to have Sue on and I don't think you can even talk about mental health and occupational therapy without bringing Sue into the conversation. Every moment counts, that entire organization is just fantastic. So we're very lucky to have someone like her in the profession.
Miranda Virone
Okay, great.
Jayson Davies
All right. Well, we are diving into the world of mental health and school based OT here. And I first want to kind of ask you both, and we can choose who takes this one on first. But you know, OT really started within the world of mental health over 100 years ago. And when I went to school, you know, a little over a decade ago, mental health was really disappearing as mostly phys does. We have school based OT, but we're starting to see that resurgence of mental health into the world of occupational therapy. And Miranda, you kind of started down the road a little bit. So maybe you can take this one first. But why is it so important for you to really bring OT and mental health together again, especially as a school based therapist?
Miranda Virone
Yeah, definitely. It is. You're right. Jason, it's our roots. It's who we are. It's the fiber of our, you know, our beginnings of, of OT back 100 years ago when we saw returning soldiers from World War One and at the time, you know, They were experiencing what we refer to as shell shock, which now we know is PTSD, right? So we were enabling these soldiers with occupations as a means of doing and being becoming right and putting some very famous OT practitioners out there. But we gave people a sense of purpose or use of their hands. And in that respect, where we were addressing the psychological components of what they were experiencing, by allowing them to feel meaning and purpose in the daily occupations of their lives, and it's no different today, we talk a lot about how we use our occupation based lens to provide supports and services and interventions to the people that we, you know, we serve, and you can't separate that, and we learn in school. It's a biopsychosocial approach, right? We are holistic practitioners. And that is the absolute truth. And, you know, deviating from that, over the last 100 years has really kind of been a source of kind of the, you know, I personally think it's like a socio political kind of impact, right. And aid can attest to that a little bit more. You know, we saw in the 60s and 70s, deinstitutionalization, they had people spread into into the community, but we had no means of supporting them at the time, it was kind of a disaster happening in the world of mental health. And we lost a lot of footing in that sector. And I think we're realizing with current trends and mental health that we need to return to our roots, we need to become part of that response in the workforce to the growing mental health needs, especially among our youth.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, absolutely. And I just posted on social media the other day that, you know, whenever you work on mental health with the student, I truly believe that you're working on every single IEP goal, and then some and so I absolutely believe that we need to focus more on mental health because, yeah, you know, a famous quote, right, like, and I'm gonna butcher this, but just because a student has increased fine motor skills doesn't mean that they are going to be able to handwrite just because they have increased, any sort of, you know, the those minor detail performance skills doesn't mean that they're actually going to be able to function in real life. But I think with mental health, right, like that is such a baseline that everyone needs mental well being in order to do all the things. And so I want to jump to you aid now. And why do you feel that OT is the right profession, especially within school based OT, that's what we're always talking about here on the podcast. But why is OT the right profession to address mental health.
Abe Saffer
So I'm going t o admit that I'm biased here, because, you know, obviously, my paycheck comes from AOTA. But that all being said, as I've mentioned before, I am the biggest fan of the profession. Mental health, for me is something really personal. I've had family members that I've dealt with my own self, I've dealt with mental health stuff in my life. And so for me, I don't feel like there's anything more important for children, especially as the father of a child was in middle school, like, the idea of a child having healthy being, you know, mentally healthy is just really important for so many different reasons. And OT has this magic where they can, practitioners can really address things more than one thing at once, which I love. And so you can say, I use myself as an example all the time, as someone who has ADHD with anxiety, if you're able to have someone come in and work with me, which they have, it's all been for free, because it's been folks that I have meetings with, and they sort of give me tips here and there that I've picked up over the years, but they helped me get organized, which lowers my anxiety. And it's so rare that you're able to get both of those things. And so whenever I see my son feeling anxious or nervous about being around friends, or not knowing, you know, being embarrassed if he can't, if he's not as good at soccer, or whatever, as someone else, like I can understand how that can impact his day to day life and how that can impact his growth and sort of the his trajectory. And OTs is, again, magical profession that can not only help someone participate in their life, but in a way that they feel good about it. And I just imagine if we hadn't just gone, you know, probably still somewhere in the middle of a, you know, dealing with this global pandemic, pre COVID We still had a mental health crisis. And if you can bring, if you can inject professionals into a problem that they can, you know, accomplish more goals than you even realize was possible. Like, I'm all for that. And it's only gotten, you know, gotten more intensive for me since since the pandemic.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, I know, we'd like to say, right, that we're in a mental health crisis now. But like you've said, you know, it's, it's extended before the pandemic, definitely. And so, yeah, I mean, we're very fortunate in the sense that ESA came around in 2015. I know we're gonna dive more into that. And ESA it's really about serving all students, not just those on an IEP. And I think that definitely plays into a role of what we're going to talk about. But before we get into the kind of how to address mental health as a school based OT, let's kind of talk about what it actually looks like to address mental health as a school based OT practitioner, and Miranda, I think this might be the perfect place for you to kind of come in and share what you've done and kind of what it can look like when a school based practitioners supporting mental health or either an individual student or maybe even a larger population.
Miranda Virone
Yeah, definitely, there are definitely ways that OT practitioners can provide those mental health interventions to students that are currently on their caseload Absolutely. And it is supported through IDA, because we understand that our kids with educational exceptionalities actually do experience a higher incidence of mental health disorders than compared to our regular ed population. So you know, that is built into the IDEA system, when we're working with kids on caseload, we can integrate mental health strategies into our goals and into our interventions. And that's something that we should never separate even we're working on collaborative goals, which is really what we're trying to strive for now, in school based practice, right? But we look at those social emotional skills that are happening within the classroom, we can collaborate together on those using some of our mental health intervention strategies that, you know, we're taught, and we're grounded in through our education and through our history. So it's absolutely we are capable of doing this work. Now with that kind of caseload approach that is happening a lot across the United States. So it is possible. But obviously, we want to shift when we can, and in some ways to making things you know, more workload based, ideally, there's a lot of talk of that going on right now in AOTA and across the nation, because our OTPs are just in school based practice there, they are overworked, we acknowledge that it is a real problem. And, you know, we're looking to AOTA to provide us some guidance with some ratios and numbers and caseload workload data in the future. So, you know, if we take that workload approach, we have the ability to really serve under both of those umbrellas, you know, we have the ability to serve under ide a, with our traditional approaches, because we have kids that have those needs, and we need to make sure we're addressing those, and we have the ability to put our ESA hat on and serve the general school population. I would love ideally, to see kind of like that 50/50 model where 50% of our time is spent working under the IDEA and 50% is spent under our ESA hat, where we can provide those tier one and tier two, universal and targeted support throughout our schools with some of these programs that are embedded into the natural environment. And that's so occupation based, right? Those programs that can happen at recess, during lunchtime in the cafeteria out on, you know, the playgrounds, wherever, wherever our kids are, together and engaging in, you know, all those aspects of occupation that happened at school social participation, you know, health management is happening at school, like leisure, it's all happening there. When we can't just single it out it only being education that's happening in the environment, because all of those things are what makes the education successful. Right. So I'd love to see the ability for us as OTPs in schools to wear both of those hats successfully. And to have the support, we need to do it effectively.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and if I ask you really quickly, just in a quote unquote, ideal world, what might a tier one and tier two Mental Health Initiative look like?
Miranda Virone
Yeah, so those will be universal support. So those are school wide programming, programming or services that we can either provide ourselves or we can collaborate with, among other team members in their schools, such as the school counselors, or school social workers, if we're lucky enough to have those in our district, right? Even our school if we have some mental health counselors in our schools, which is just absolutely fabulous to see that happen. But it can be individual types of approaches where, you know, we as a loan profession are targeting some needs. And I love to start with like some mental health literacy programs or some emotional literacy programs for the real little ones, pre K, kindergarten, first grade kids. Those are great universal programs to start with. And then you know, moving up to tier two, we can get some targeted groups together or working on small groups within classrooms on some of those social emotional skills. We can also talk about I love talking about social inclusion. I think that's a really great tier one and tier two strategy, especially in small groups. We talked about how to include people, and how to be sure we're not intentionally or unintentionally exploiting people. So there's a lot of different ways that we can be involved in those tier one and tier two strategies through MTSS. You know, they're, they're wonderful. It's just finding that place to start Right.
Jayson Davies
Yeah.
Miranda Virone
that's always the challenge. How do you get started? And you know, I'd love to share some ideas about that with everybody today.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, I love that and excited to get into that, especially the idea of OT supporting inclusion from an RTI MTSS model, like, how often do we talk about inclusion within an IEP about a single student, but then we do nothing other than trying to push that student into a classroom to actually support that student in the classroom. Like, we need to be talking to the general classroom, the entire school, about how to support this student and all the other students in the included classrooms, as opposed to just like, send a one on one aid and with this one student, and just magically, everything's going to be better. So, before we move on, I do just want to ask you really quickly for the OT practitioners out there, they say, you know, I kind of addressed mental health, but I don't have a specific goal to address mental health, you know, for my students on an IEP. So from your perspective, what does it look like to actually support a student on an IEP via mental health type of services? Does there need to be a specific mental health goal? Or is it just kind of something you do every day?
Miranda Virone
Yeah, I think that incorporating mental health interventions and strategies is a natural pairing with any intervention strategy that we attempt that does address goals that students might have, whether they're collaborative goals, or freestanding goals. When we think about our interventions, we can choose from a wide array of things to address those goals. We are not pigeon holed into something very specific, like we can not just do handwriting, because we have a handwriting goal. So we can only address handwriting, if we want to address the mental health component that is associated with maybe the handwriting struggles, because that child can't keep up with the handwriting challenges in the classroom, they feel excluded, they feel isolated, they feel embarrassed, you know, turn that handwriting opportunity into a journaling opportunity where that child gets to express their feelings and emotions about those situations, turn it into some sort of an artistic expression activity where the child can draw or create something through your interventions that expresses what they're feeling, or what their world might look like, if everybody else understood a little bit better, or push into that classroom, and address some social emotional topics during a group handwriting activity in the classroom. There are so many different ways, we just have to be willing to think outside the box, push a few little buttons here and there and get some buy in, always look for that one person in your school that's willing to give you an opportunity. That's a great way to start establishing some buy in with your partners in the school setting.
Jayson Davies
Absolutely. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, I really think that we need to inject mental health and just about to every session, like we can't just ignore mental health, like it is really a backbone of every single thing that a child does. And you know, if their handwriting impacts them in the classroom, then you can bet that there might feel a little self conscious about their handwriting. I know I did as a kid, and I'm sure there are others that feel the same way. Alright, Abe, coming back to you now, because we're going to talk a little bit about government affairs. You already talked a little bit about how the mental health crisis was here before the pandemic, but obviously, during the pandemic, like mental health was actually on the news much more often. What does that look like in DC? What are you seeing at the legislative level when it comes to mental health? It sounds like it's more of a buzzword in DC. Is that the case right now?
Abe Saffer
Definitely more of a buzz word on the Hill in Congress where things are very contentious. When you talk about mental health, it's one of those bipartisan issues where people on both sides will agree oh, we need to do something. And actually Congress in 2020, to pass the Safer Communities Act, which to show you how much of a bipartisan issue mental health is and how big of a priority it is. The Safer Communities Act was in response to the mass shooting at Uvalde, Texas, which was, you know, horrific. And Congress, in its way, Congress passed the largest, most expansive gun control legislation in 30 years. But on top of that, it also included a huge amount of money and funding and support for mental health in schools. And so it's so it's such a big deal that this is something that is uniting folks to do actually make a change and do something. On the mental health side. It's, you definitely see a lot more folks that are lobbying, talking about their role in mental health, but because we've been doing this and why we I mean, OT, AOTA and practitioners have been doing this for years prior. We sort of have a little bit more credibility on that and we can talk about it because we have that long history of mental health and the profession. You know, it was 2016 was one of the first times I don't, I can't confirm. But I think it's first time in a either a long time or ever that like federal legislation actually included, was included to or amended to include OT into it. So it was this behavioral health workforce program through HERSA. That actually added OT to it. And since then you just sort of the way because he works in policies, you just build on past successes until you can get to a place where, you know, hopefully you want to be and that's sort of the way it works. And so, you know, in the last now, it would have been eight years since 2016, where we've made a ton of progress. And since COVID, it's just been taking off, like we've been able to make leaps and bounds because first of all, there's just such a huge need. So even, you know, I hate to talk about like turf wars, but that was sort of a DC reality. But now it's like, there's just such a huge shortage of mental health professionals in general, and school folks in general, that when we do talk about this, there's not as much, you know, no, that's mine, or are you stick to yours, that sort of thing, it's if someone can help in a way that, you know, that they're trained to help, please come in and help, like, we need all of it that we can get. So it's definitely become one of those huge issues in DC, as well, you know, at the state level, and I know that schools are talking about it, as well. And I think over the next couple of years, we're gonna see a lot of change related to it. And we'll just, you know, hope to keep it going on a positive trajectory.
Jayson Davies
Awesome, awesome, man. And you mentioned that, you know, national shortage of mental health providers, and I've actually ran into some OT practitioners across the, across the spectrum, and they really aren't sure if they are a mental health provider. And I think that's not uncommon. I think a lot of us question, right, because like, we're an OT, we didn't necessarily get a lot of mental health training as a therapist and OT school, maybe we haven't gone to a lot of mental health trainings, do we still constitute as a mental health provider and who judges whether or not that's accurate or not.
Abe Saffer
So in the policy realm, there's a bunch of different judges, most of them will look to the states. And so I'll talk about one mental health grant that the Department of ED releases, so they released this every year, they announced that every year, it's called the mental health service professionals demonstration program, or MHSP. And it's one of the few if not the only, like specific workforce grant for mental health, that the Department of Education administers all the rest are usually done through other agencies. Okay, so it got supersized with the Safer Communities Act that I mentioned, and went from roughly 100 million dollars a year to 500 million on top of that 100 million in 2022. And so, in that grant, it specifies and sort of this is the common theme when I talk mental health in schools is the grants best four buckets of eligibility, and it's schools, school counselors, school psychologists, social workers. And then number four is sort of the catch all in any other profession that is eligible to provide sorry, allowed by state law to provide mental health services to children. And so while there's a, you know, a federal law, or, you know, definition of what mental health providers in school looks like, because they, you know, they look to, they include three professions specifically, and then this catch all, they want to make sure that they're getting as many folks as possible. And so, because of that, in 2022, we were able to get a couple prob, a number of programs to apply for this mental health grant. And two of them got it. And that represents the first two programs that have ever gotten any, like, mental health education funding from the Department of Ed, like specific for just mental health. And both grants totaled about over almost $10 million. One was in Texas at the University of Incarnate Word, and the other one was in Minnesota, with the College of St. Scholastica. And it's just been, it's just been incredible. And I shared with both of you just as we were starting up, but the Department of Ed actually released new guidance on this grant. And there's two or frequently asked questions and one of them is is OTs eligible? And they said, Yes, OTs can apply for this can be eligible for this, as long as their state law says this, and I had the pleasure and honor of going through every single state Practice Act that defines the scope and every single one of them includes either cognitive psychosocial or psychological. So we are and by we I try to be cool and put myself in the category of a practitioner, but OT is eligible in every single state as a mental health profession. And if anyone ever says well Why, you know, if OT should be included? Why not X, Y and Z, you can say, look a state law, like, if they say that they should be a mental health professional and their scope of practice is defined by the state law, like, then yeah, we need all the help we can get and let them bring them in. But if they don't, if they're not, if that's not included in their scope, like, that shouldn't be part of their their efforts.
Jayson Davies
Well.
Miranda Virone
I'd love to answer this from an educational perspective to Miranda, like, I would love to just jump right in because that, you know, acknowledging the government's view, right, and federal legislation and language, and then state level language that's in our, you know, our not only our practice acts, but also in state level legislation is so important, but it's empowering to hear that, right? You hear that and you like it's there, we have the language there to support this. And when we go to our educational standards, right are a code standards. You look at how many times psychosocial or mental health is mentioned, in our accreditation standards, it would blow your mind because our educational accrediting body acknowledges that this is a component of who we are, you're never going to separate this from physical, the physical health and well being of individuals, because there's parity between the two, psychological and physical health, and social health are all equally important across the board, because they're so interconnected. So the Educational Standards support that. Not only that, when you compare our educational standards to some of the other acknowledged providers of mental health services, we meet or exceed, and educational standards, what they are seeing. So it is there, we just have this fierce impostor syndrome, we truly do, we don't know where we belong, we don't know where we fit, especially in schools. We don't know what we can do, we don't want to step on toes. But our lens is so very different from everybody else's, that if we can just build the courage to talk about it, and feel comfortable and confident talking about it, we can break down a lot of barriers that way.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and something that I see here in Southern California, and thank you for sharing about the imposter syndrome, I was gonna bring that up, but you went right into it. So awesome. But something I'm seeing here in Southern California, at least is that we are one of the more easily accessible mental health providers within the schools. Psychologists do a lot of testing, but they don't do a lot of therapy. Getting into a program for counseling or talking to a school psychologist is very difficult for some kids. I mean, you think it's hard to get into OT it's really hard to get, like in touch with a counselor. I mean, there's just, I think that because of that, that shortage, school districts have put up probably illegal barriers to kids getting those services, and at least they can get OT and we can be that quote unquote, Frontline, for lack of better and we're not really frontline and when I call it it, but I mean, compared to the others, were frontline mental health providers, per se. And I think that's important. And like you said, it's something that we do need to embrace ame shared exactly what our state practice x, x have proven it. And like you said, right, we need to get over that impostor syndrome and just kind of take it on. So thank you both. That was a great tag team applaud. All right. So Abe I want to come back to you, because there's something that you have mentioned to me, that has really has kind of like almost made me rethink everything I know. And I think other OT practitioners need to hear this as well, because we always want to kind of blame the laws blame the federal laws that don't allow us to do this or that when it comes to mental health. Are there laws either in place or that just don't exist? That are barriers or facilitators? And you kind of dove into this a minute ago, but just want to give you a second to talk about that?
Abe Saffer
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Um, I get a lot of calls and emails from OTs and OTAs, from all over the country. And what I found is that the majority of them and I would say I use the, say 99 out of 100 of them. When people are complaining, I can't do whatever X, Y or Z and it could be anything. They sort of asked like what needs to be changed on the federal level. And I say probably nothing like it's usually not a federal barrier that is preventing you from doing something it is generally, if anything, it might be a state law, but more often than not, it's just people who don't understand what OTs is, what it does, what it's capable of, and what federal and state law allows by it. I can't tell you how many times I've heard and so much that it became my number one myth on my myth document. You know, OTs are not a lot of provides services to any student with an IEP, because they're paid entirely under IDEA part B, like, I'm gonna get that tattooed on my forehead, because I've heard it so much. And I would say to them, let's just assume for a fact that you are paid entirely under Part B, which RP accounts for about 3% of national education funding, so the chances of that being the case is very small. Even if that was the case, you're still allowed to provide spent use use about 15%, up to 15% of your IDEA funding for early intervening services, which is a multi tiered system of support services. So there are schools out there that just, you know, Miranda said that things could be different from district to district. And I would just one up her and say, I've seen things that are different from school to school that an OT or an OTA is going from multiple schools in the same district and are dealing with two different, you know, realities. So as, as I've talked about on this podcast, and everywhere else, even dinner with my family and noise them, but where I talk about is that it just it never had that implementation. And so people don't know what a specialized instructional support personnel means what that term is. And it's just the related, it's just the list under the general ed law as the Every Student Succeeds Act that is the exact same as under IDEA. And it just allows for multi tiered systems of support. It allows for OTs, and OTAs, to work in General Ed. And so someone told me, a longtime education advocate a while ago, that something that they said to me, I just I loved. And it was the biggest issue, the biggest barrier that we face is misconceptions that have solidified that schools are so risk averse, which they you know, they, for obvious reasons, and I don't begrudge them at all for being risk averse. Having both my parents be retired teachers, like, I, I'm glad that they are a little risk averse, sometimes. But I will say that there are, that there are things that they have always done. And when you try to change that, you have to provide them with just overwhelming evidence that it's allowed, it's that they're not gonna get in trouble for it, because their administrators are very nervous. So when it comes to the ability to be able to provide mental health services, or, you know, to be frank and anything other than handwritings support in a school, you need to be able to convince that administrator. And the issue is most school based practitioners, you know, I won't say all just because I'm sure there's a couple that are other fine, but probably all, are so busy, that they don't have the time to like, research this and look this up, you know, some of them know to call me and, you know, my hobby at this point is just like helping look up laws, because I'm a lobbyist, I'm confrontational, like I want to win a fight, but they don't have the time to look it up. And administrators are just again, risk averse, and they don't have the time to sort of like, explore something that they're not sure about. They always sort of do what has been acceptable in the past. And so one of my goals for this year, which our fiscal year ends at the end of June, but so it'll bleed over into 2025 is to just develop resources for practitioners, or at least start doing it, to be able to let them advocate and talk about, you know, explain what is OTs role in mental health, explain why they are allowed to provide services, like what Universal Supports, they could actually provide, you know, like, basically just the fact sheet version of Miranda to be able to walk around and say like, this is, folks like this is the this is what your goal should be like, you can go ahead and do that. So it's it's the most frustrating, but it's also the area of my job where I see the most room for progress, because I don't have to get Congress to do anything to change this. And if you haven't been paying attention, that's not the easiest thing to do, do these days is to get Congress to do something even more difficult than usual. So it's exciting. And I do feel like we're right at the cusp of just seismic change in the profession in terms of school base for, you know, practice if we can just harness it.
Miranda Virone
And our advocacy has to start on a micro level, right? I mean, Abe got us he's got us covered at that macro level. But you can't assume that your school administrators know anything about ESA, there's a very strong chance that they don't. So you going to them with this information, maybe the first time they're ever hearing of it, and it can open up a lot of doors. It can open up a lot of conversations too, which I think is fabulous. So don't be afraid to have a conversation. You're coming in with the best interests of your students in mind. That's all it's about. It's not about who's right, who's wrong. It's not about I want to do this and prove to you that I can do this. It's about This is what these kids need. They fundamentally need these programs, they need the skills to build these skills. So they can be successful in all areas of occupation, right, and they can, in turn someday be successful adults too. So don't be afraid to have those conversations again, mildly intrusive, it's okay. It's okay to be that way. It can open up a lot of doors for you. That's why I'm here today.
Abe Saffer
I'll build on it. Just Just one last pitch is that? is absolutely right. Like it does begin on that level. And my plea to everyone who is listening is don't keep it on that level. So if you do have that victory, if you do, you know, if you are able to convince an administrator, let me know, like, I would absolutely love to hear that. Because the more times that I hear about stuff like that happening on the local level, or a state that's doing something innovative, the easier it is, for me to be able to sell that nationwide, whether that's state to state or, you know, on the to the federal government. So please don't keep it a secret.
Jayson Davies
Yeah. And if you need Abe's contact information, he's all over Twitter. And we will definitely have it on the show notes. So or acts as I guess it's called now. But anyways, continuing on Miranda, we've already talked about some of the barriers, age definitely kind of brought it down, kind of put the onus on us a little bit at the micro level. But from your perspective, what you have seen both as a practitioner and in talking to, you know, current ongoing, school based OT practitioners, what are you seeing as the biggest barriers to kind of getting going with with supporting mental health?
Miranda Virone
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely starts with ridiculous case loads. I, I can't not say that, because I know that your listeners feel that pain. And that's the first pain that they feel in practice, you know, and the reality is, you know, the AOTA workforce survey tells us that 25% of our OT practitioners are in schools, they're operating and functioning in schools. So that's a huge component of our workforce. And I think I'm so glad that Aotea is listening to our call, and need to establish some guidelines, some parity in what we're doing, you know, in comparison to other professionals in schools. You know, it's hard, because, you know, how do you advocate for workload approach, you really have to do you know, we talked about time studies, how you can you do this within your school to show what it is that you're doing, and show the overall need of the students in the building, based upon the climate and culture of the school, based upon the increase in mental health demands that are happening in the schools? I mean, gosh, all you have to do is ask for truancy reports, ask for behavioral reports and incidents reports. There's the data right there on a school and district level, that data, right, there is very telling of what's happening within our schools, we do have the skills to support that and we don't have to go hiring another individual to do it, you know, completely, we just need some additional support, we need some additional time. So again, that comes down to that advocacy piece, what can we do to advocate for that workload approach? What can we do to advocate for more time, in our week to address some of these needs that are happening among the regular population, we have to feel comfortable in our own skin, addressing our administrators again, you know, join some of these communities that practice, educate yourself, be amongst the people that share your interests and values, because they're the ones that are going to support you. We've got lots and lots of people out there that are doing amazing things. And they will inspire you every time you meet with them, or surround yourself with them. Even in a virtual contexts. You can take that and use it as fuel for your energy. And also, as you know, collecting data on how to proceed with those things, then the last piece is really funding and he touched a bit on this too, you know, we're talking about either additional hours in a week to address these mental health programs, you know, under that umbrella of ESA, not every school receives any funding from ESA, right. Not every district receives funding from ESA, it's really based kind of on some other methodology. So, you know, ESA provides us with great language. And it provides us with legislation and great support, but it doesn't always necessarily provide us with funding. And in my experience is schools that do receive as a funding, have kind of already appropriated it elsewhere, to ask them to redirect those funds towards some of these OT initiatives might be a little bit of a challenge. So we had to look for other ways to find funding. You know, I think a might have touched on free free care role expansion through ma that's one way that we can talk about that on a state level. You know, we might be asked to find the money to support this. So we need to be creative. We need to practice our grant writing skills, we may need to get in touch with some community agencies and partnerships to help us do this work to and they're out there. I've seen it happen. There are community businesses and agencies that are willing to give money to schools to support these efforts because they appreciate the need and value of what's happening.
Jayson Davies
That's awesome. Yeah. And I know by time this episode gets published, a OTA is having a webinar on grants and how to potentially find grants and apply for grants. But that webinar is likely available on a replay as my guest. And if we can find it, we'll definitely link to it for everyone to watch it. That's a big thing. I do want to dive into so little bit, I don't think we've addressed s fully since episode 91, when he was last with us. We've talked a little bit about ESA already today. But if there was a quick overview of ESA, I don't know who wants to take this one. But just kind of a quick overview and how it applies to school based OT practitioners.
Abe Saffer
That's all AYP. So Essa, for those who don't know, Every Student Succeeds Act is actually the reauthorization that was passed of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. So the SCA, as it's called, was created in start with first pass in 65. And it created the department of education and public education in the nation as we know it. And so, as with every other major piece of legislation, the Congress sets it up to be nice to be be authorized, you know, regularly, usually every five or 10 years just depending on or even shorter, just depending on what type of legislation it is. But if you're ever if you've ever heard of No Child Left Behind, that was a bill that was passed in early 2000s That reauthorize EFCA. That's a replay replace that. And so when ESA was being debated in Congress, and it was before my time at MCA, but there was a huge emphasis on sort of creating this continuum, this sort of continuum of care for students of services with IDA. And so that's where assist comes from the specialized instructional support personnel, the brand new term that was created in 2015, to be able to say that these folks, you know, OTs OTAs, should be able to provide services in the general ed space. Now, the way that the system works is that the process works is first Congress passes a major piece of legislation, then the relevant agency will develop regulations in order to let folks know how you know, fill in the blank, so to speak. So in 2015, the bill was passed 2016, Department of Ed rolled out new regulations around it. And then what normally happens next is that the agency will say, here are some documents that aren't law, but it's like us, trying to make it easier for you to understand what the law says, which is called our guidance documents. That would have happened in 2017. And at that point, it was a new administration that took over for the Obama administration. And they just weren't got, they just had even told us point blank as one of my first things meetings I had with the Department of Ed, in my role, they said, This is just not what we do. And so we're now seven years, eight years, almost no, sorry, nine years from when si was passed. And there's never been a guidance document released that says, This is what this brand new term is, and why it's such a huge deal. You know, most, most OTs and OTAs. And states are usually under the Office of Special Education. And if not, it's usually the office of Pupil services. And pupil services isn't a thing anymore. And it's just states haven't made that change and districts don't know. And so I am happy that I'm proud to be able to share and I'll make sure we can link this for your folks, Jason. But the National Alliance of specialized instructional support personnel, the Coalition of all the professional associations that represent all these professions, as well as the teachers unions and the principals and the special ed administrators and a lot of others, we came together and worked on guidance, because if the department isn't going to release something, we wanted to make sure that states had that, that they had that tool at their disposal. So we have that on an Asus website now. And folks can can share that as widely as they want. It's, it's hot off the presses. So that so to speak. But essay is here until it needs to get reauthorized, which could be could be any year, but it might have come and gone without anyone really knowing it. But the policies within it, I think are here to stay because they really were intended to allow for a lot of flexibility, making sure that schools and districts weren't told what to do meanwhile giving them options. And I think that a lot of districts when they find out about it, love that.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at that document that from NSSP that you just talked about, and I'm just looking at some of the titles, the subtitles, and we're talking about school climate, chronic absenteeism, bullying, discipline, mental and physical health. I mean, these are all I'm pretty sure there's been a topic or a podcast episode on the daily and many other the most popular podcasts out there on each of these topics because they are such a big thing right now, within schools. I mean, I know the daily just the other day had one. Absenteeism, like 28% of kids chronically absent. I mean, it's just amazing. So I love that the NASSISP, sorry, nassisp. Is that how you say it Abe?
Abe Saffer
It is, it's a great term, but it does not roll off the tongue very.
Jayson Davies
But yeah, I love how they're basically just correlating everything that is research based and hot right now, and saying, Hey, we've got all the people right here that can address those things. And here they are. They're all under this term. They're all under this umbrella. And they're available. So that is awesome. All right. In this episode, we have talked a lot about the problem. We've talked about the problem from many different angles. And I want to spend the last few minutes here talking about how we can be the solution we dipped in dabbled a little bit in that over over the last 45 minutes. But I really want to talk about starting from the ground level school based OT practitioners who are excited to say, Hey, I'm assist, I can work on mental health or I'm a related service provider, I can work on mental health and a one on one setting where they can get started with that. And so if we start with what I think is the potentially the most easy to understand the most palpable because I think we're all doing that is those one on one services, IDE related services. So maybe Miranda, if you want to take this? How can we just start to get into the world of mental health and working with our one on one students?
Miranda Virone
Well, think about it this way, right? We don't have to define where we're working with those one on one students what environment that's happening. And we know what's happening in the walls of the school, but it doesn't mean we have to take them out of the classroom, and take them into a therapy room or a hallway or a closet for some of us, right? It means that we can work with them in their natural environment, their natural environment, is the classroom. It is the cafeteria, it is the playground, all of those environments within natural environments for the students that we work with. So we can go into those environments. And again, as we talked about before, it doesn't necessarily mean that we are only addressing that particular student, we might be addressing the whole classroom, who responds to that student and interacts with that student, those one on one services are still reflective of that embedded approach where we can go into the classroom and address the needs of one student and inadvertently dress the address the needs of the entire classroom, right, which is really cool. And that's a way for us to show. Our educators and our faculty in schools are distinct value. And when you do that you get buy in. So if one classroom teacher sees what you can do and your capability, you know, when you're really focusing your efforts on one student, but every student benefits in the classroom, that's still an intense target an intense intervention, that's still tier three support, you're still working through ide a to provide that services, students still billable, you can still bill for that service, you are just choosing the context in which you're providing that service in. So think about it that way and your documentation, your documentation has to be reflective of that too, right and supporting why it's necessary to provide that in that environment. So that's definitely where to start. When we're talking about one on one services.
Jayson Davies
you will follow up really quickly. A lot of therapists I find get hung up on the idea that a goal must be academic ly relevant. And then we talk about services that are taking place outside of the classroom outside of the OT room, out on the playground, cafeteria and whatnot. How would you address that?
Miranda Virone
Yeah, definitely. So the purpose when you create goals where you collaborate on goals, it is the success of the student in the educational environment. That's what Id EA is looking for. So what contributes to that success, right? It's not just education, specific focus, it's also social focus. It's also leisure focus of play participation, all of those factors contribute to educational success of that student. So use your OT lens, use your occupations. If you can justify it in your documentation, then you've done what you need to do. And so just go back to making sure that you're justifying what you're doing. And you're supporting it using that holistic lens. That's, that is what we do. And ide a acknowledges that we are related service providers with a distinct set of skills. So that that's already in place. They know that you just have to document it as such.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and then one more, if I may, because we talked a little bit about documentation. I think therapists are a little scared to use the word mental health or the phrase mental health within an IEP because they're told you're the fine motor. They don't want to use it anywhere other than maybe on those more internal treatment plan document or a soap note. So should therapists have permission to use mental health on an IEP to use that term? Or should they? Do they need permission? Or, like, how do we get over this fear of like, I can't use the word mental health?
Miranda Virone
Absolutely. Well, the reality is, you know, we are not died, we cannot diagnose, right, we cannot diagnose a child with a mental health disorder, we may not even have the kids that are on our caseload may not have an identified mental health disorder, but you may have symptoms, that we might be helping them manage their symptoms. So think about it that way. So when we see, you know, the mental health symptoms that we see externally, and sometimes they internalize them, too, right? Those are what we call psychosocial factors. Those are how they influence these are the mental health signs and symptoms that influence their ability to interact with their environment. So when we revert and use that language, that's very much within our scope of practice. And that supersedes all practice acts, all, you know, that's within all of our federal language. So if you use that language, it's very supportive of what we do in our profession, and then we're not encroaching upon any potentially questionable language use.
Jayson Davies
I love that. That was like the perfect answer. I think we all need to just internalize that and remember that we have all this language to fall back on to support ourselves. So great, thank you so much. All right. Now if we go a little bit more broad, and someone is thinking, You know what, all right, I got the I got the one on one sessions. Even in some group sessions, I'm addressing some psychosocial factors. Beyond that. Now, I want to start getting into the MTS s s around and supporting larger groups. How can I get started?
Miranda Virone
Yeah, so you've, you've done some push in, you've done some embeddable strategies with maybe one of your one on one students, you've created this great rapport with that classroom teacher, you build this relationship, you have wild that teacher with your abilities. That's your buy in, right. Yeah, that's your person. So now you say, Hey, would you mind if I came into your classroom and did just a little segment, 10 minutes on emotional literacy? What do you think about that we're going to identify emotions, we're going to talk about what emotions look like, what they feel like, how to manage these challenging emotions. I can't imagine too many educators that are going to say, No, emotions aren't a problem in our classroom. Right. So that's just a way to get that small by and start with the littles, right, your kindergarten, first grade, they love having people come in, you know, there's a lot of energy in those classrooms. So having even a 10 or 15 minute reprieve, by having somebody else come in to do some programming is usually fairly welcome. So that's a great way to start. And then work your way up, you know, work your way up through your intermediate schools. And then you see all these great things happening, you start collecting some data, right, just some easy simple data, using maybe an exit ticket with the teacher on the, you know, the climate of the room, once you leave, or maybe some changes that they see in the next couple of hours after you've left the classroom. Or if they see any strategies that kids are starting to use independently after you've taught them to the classroom. That is great evidence right there that what you have done is supportive and effective. And then you can present this information to the administration. Look what I've done. This is all the great stuff that is happening just in this one classroom. Imagine if I could do this in the entire school. Right?
Jayson Davies
Yeah, All right. There's gonna be some people if I don't ask you about exit ticket and how that worked.
Miranda Virone
Yeah, exit ticket is really just kind of a little survey that the classroom teacher would take, you give a couple of questions. So you're not collecting, you know, that's not research data. You're not collecting, you don't need an IRB to do that. Right? You're just collecting some survey data from that classroom teacher on how things went, what they liked, what we could do differently, and then maybe follow up a day later with another survey, asking, you know, some getting some qualitative information. What strategies did you observe your kids using after I left or the day after? What has what carryover has occurred since we met last, and that is great information that you can take to your administrator, you know, the proof is in the pudding. Right? Right there it shows you some great solid evidence that your efforts are working.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and I personally, I've just found that once you get in with one teacher, you never know what's gonna take you. It's amazing, right? Like you really do meet that one teacher because you had one student in their classroom. And now because you know that one teacher now you know, the one administrator and because you know, the one administrator, you know, the one district level administrator and the next thing you know, they're asking you to do an entire presentation to all the kindergarten teachers on something because they've seen you kind of go through the ranks and just help everyone so absolutely. All right, I want to come back to a but really quickly and ask kind of your last minute thoughts at the end of this podcast on individual OT practitioners being able to advocate for themselves and to work their way up within the realm of mental health at individual school.
Abe Saffer
Yeah, I think it's a great, great way to sort of end it. But my colleague, Jill has a fantastic way of saying this, where she wants people to advocate up and out. And that is the way of saying, you know, there's advocacy is not just one thing, it's not just what I do, or what people do, you know, on a grassroots level, there's advocacy is trying to get laws changed, or, you know, on the federal or state level advocacy, is trying to get something changed in your school, to be able to say, I want to be able to do you know, this intervention. Advocacy is also about trying to convince a client or a parent of a student to accept your plan of care, like, those are all advocacy. And so as you're looking through this, and as you're looking through your day, I would say that efficacy is also telling people what occupational therapy is not just parents and teachers, but friends and family, because the more that people know about it, the more that people can understand it, even if they don't understand the full scope. And I will say, I do not have any OT training than an AMC for seven and a half years, I think I have, okay, understanding of the profession. But there's still things I learned constantly where I'm like, Oh, you can do that, too. That makes sense. So just being able to sort of share that with as many people as possible, because when you find people that understand occupational therapy and are pushing for it, then that's gonna lead to policies being created at the, you know, the building level or the federal level, that are working to try to make sure that OTs and OTs can do what they do. You know, Miranda talked about workload, and caseload, and that's something that is, you know, is extremely important. And we're trying to find a way to be able to sort of start to move in that direction of workload without, you know, just not dumping a ton of extra work on folks right now. But we're also worried about, we want to make sure that like, there's such a demand that that, that schools are willing to say, in order, while we're changing this, we're going to figure out a way to make it as easy as possible on you. And so advocate to everyone, you know, talk about it at the Thanksgiving table, talk about it, and you're in line to the grocery store, talk about it anywhere you can, I can tell you that there's been a few times where I've been able to advocate it not in an official capacity, but just like talking to my family and friends about this. And it's it's everyone, I think, who who graduates from a program understands how amazing their profession is, and share that with others, because you want to make sure that they it's not just being kept a secret. And that way, selfishly, it makes my job easier. So that's, you know, a lobbyist is kind of one of my defining traits, but like the idea of being able to go into a meeting and say, Are you familiar with occupational therapy, and then say, well, I've never had it, and I'm not only but like, my cousin down the street has it. And, you know, I know, three or four OTs that I'm friends with. And so they've talked about it. That is such a much different meeting for me than if I go into a meeting. And they're like, no relation to it at all. And I started talking about it, and then they say, oh, yeah, my grandmother got that. Or my, my son got that you're like, yes. So talk to everyone about it never stopped bragging. Like, it might feel weird for you. But it might be the difference between someone in your life getting access to OT and that, and it might be the x the difference between them having independence and success. And that, and I want to look at any case studies Look at me, like I view myself as the product of OT. And it just happened to be that that OT was my boss. So please, just advocate everywhere you can. And tell me about it, too.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, you know, and we as as especially a school based OT practitioners like to almost brag that our bosses know nothing about what we do. And that shouldn't be the case. And the onus is on us to explain to them what OT is. And you might have to do it three, four or five a dozen times before they really understand. But we also shouldn't shy away from making sure that they understand, especially when they're our own boss. I like to say that with one of my previous special education coordinators who oversaw occupational therapy, we had a love, hate respect Um, relationship, you know, like, by the time I was done there, I think she understood OT a little bit more than she did when I got there, she would often become frustrated by me because I would kind of point to research or I would point to Ida sections. But that also helped her to better understand OT. And to a point, eventually, she would just look to me and say, Jason, I know you have the answer to this because you kind of do your homework. And she understood what I knew and what my profession was at that point. And yeah, there was that there was definitely that that respect for one another, too. We butt heads occasionally. Yeah, because we were both advocating for what we knew was right for kids. And that's okay to butt heads a little bit. But we had that respect for one another. And I think that kind of that kind of goes hand in hand with advocacy, I think. And so as Miranda put, it, what was the term that we were going with for the podcast term? intrusively, mildly intrusive?
Miranda Virone
Yes, mildly intrusive, you gotta be mild it. And the last, I just can't say this enough. Find your people, right? Find your people, the school mental health, community of practices, a great way to find the support that you need to do these things, you know, ideas and language and law. It's all there in that group. So if that's something that you are passionate about, you know, find your people to help you pursue it. It's a really great community of practice. There's a lot of support there a lot of networking, that happens as well. So I would strongly encourage you to get involved that way.
Jayson Davies
Absolutely. All right, well, I think that is a great place for us to wrap up today. Eva, Miranda, I want to thank you so much for spending the last hour or so with me really appreciate it. And I know so many school based OT practitioners are going to listen to this and just feel a lot better about where they are in their schools and how to provide or get started with providing mental health services. So thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
Abe Saffer
Thank you for the opportunity. Yeah, thank you for all you do.
Jayson Davies
Thank you appreciate it. All right, thank you one more time, Miranda and a for joining us and sharing your invaluable insights into the integration of mental health and school based occupational therapy, your expertise, your dedication to advocating for and advancing this crucial aspect within occupational therapy is truly inspiring, and we cannot thank you enough. To you our listener, I hope this episode has enlightened and equipped you with a new perspective on maybe just how mental health is so important within the realm of occupational therapy, especially in the setting that so many of us work in the educational setting. Remember, as OT practitioners, you're not just addressing tasks, you're addressing the student's entire ability to access their education, mental health included. If you found this discussion helpful and you wish you could get even more support. As a school based OT practitioner, I invite you to check out the OT School Health Collaborative at OTSchoolHouse.com slash collab. Inside the collaborative you can earn a certificate of completion for listening to this very episode, and access further resources and support related to today's important topic. Our collaborative community is tailored to help you succeed and thrive and your practice providing you with the tools and community you need. Earn see us review the research and receive mentorship all year long at OTSchoolHouse.com slash collab. Thank you again for tuning in to the OT schoolhouse podcast. We're grateful for your continued support and eagerness to grow in your OT practice. I look forward to having you join us again on our next engaging and educational journey. We'll see you next time.
Amazing Narrator
Thank you for listening to the OT schoolhouse podcast. For more ways to help you and your students succeed right now. Head on over to OT school house.com Until next time, class is dismissed.
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