Our clinicians mainly provide Educationally Related Mental Health Services (ERMHS) for students with IEPs while also providing a variety of support to all students: risk assessments, wellness check ins during lunch and tier 2 counseling. Our Wellness Coach was added to provide greater support, via individual check ins and group interventions for students in need who don’t have an IEP. Bringing all of this to a new partnership requires lots of collaboration to integrate with pre-established systems and staff. Latitude started the year with 2 internal clinicians and we collaborated on multiple levels so that the clinicians, Seneca and Latitude, are united as a clinical team even as the team composition has changed throughout the year. The Wellness Coach role was new this year and required some “inventing the wheel” collaboration to define what the role looks at Latitude and get into a flow.
We look forward to continued collaboration next year as we add another Seneca clinician to the team. Whatever new needs, challenges, opportunities emerge, we’ll have a strong foundation to build from.