The era for tele-practice is here!
With all in-person sessions and support going online due to the public health crisis, thousands of families and professionals that are trying to adjust to the new reality. But as more and more people adopt online tools and services, it’s clear that nothing is truly designed with an extreme user and scenario in mind. Between zoom sessions and analogue tools that therapists use in their practice, the opportunity to create an adaptable and scalable tool that meets the needs of professionals and the families is infinite.
Last week I had my first taste of tele-practice with my son’s applied behaviour therapist. While the sessions are usually done in a class environment and are fairly structured, we coordinated a video call that included a few of his regular activities.
Below is the summary of my thoughts and where I think is the opportunity for innovation. The same principles can be applied to e-learning in my opinion as long as families and young children are the main stakeholders:
1/ Kids don’t really care!
The first thing I noticed was how quickly he adapted to the video format and didn’t mind seeing his instructor online at all. Before the session started, I had all kinds of concerns about whether the concept of interacting with his teacher on the screen is going to be too difficult for him, but that was not the case at all. At one point during the session, his therapist started reading a book while holding the pages in front of the camera. My son immediately jumped in and interacted with her and the book just like he would during an in-person session.
2/ Keeping distractions away at home is challenging
Staying still at a table for a toddler or a preschooler is hard even with adult supervision. Doing it remote while there are other distractions around is almost impossible. My son is often razor focused on the screen when he’s watching his favourite show. But that was certainly not the case when it was learning time! The toys on the floor, the snack in the fridge and the sounds from the street were enough to distract him periodically during his session. This is where adult’s role becomes critical to ensure the child stays attentive which is related to my next point.
3/ Focus on tele-coaching, not tele-practice!
We know early intervention is only effective when parents are involved and trained to apply the strategies at home. This is true whether therapy is done in person or remote. In a way, the focus of e-learning or tele-practice for young children should be on coaching the parents and to empower them with tools and strategies that makes them better facilitators of their child’s growth. When thinking about building tools that will be used by families with young children, the main focus should be on the parent and not the child.
4/ Keeping track of progress in between sessions is key
One of the biggest gaps in tele-practice is the lack of ways for health professionals to track their client’s progress in between sessions. In my experience, this is mostly done through self reporting (observations) and occasional tests and screeners that are given to families in the form of questionnaires, charts, etc.
We at Babbly spend a lot of time thinking about ways we can provide parents and health professionals accessible tools to track a child’s development and to reduce bias as much as possible. When we reached out to American Speech Hearing Language Association (ASHA) a few months ago for guidance and regulations on remote therapy, we received a general response which was a signal that this is still very new to them and their members. Within the last two weeks, many professions including Speech Language Pathologists have been faced with an existential question around what their practice is going to look like when most their time with their clients may not be face to face anymore. We’ve seen a lot of great initiatives from individuals and associations and we are excited to work with the best in the field.
We believe in a very near future, parents will keep a diary of their child’s speech development as they would with the photos of their first steps. For health professionals, this will be a gold mine as it will allow them to evaluate a child not based on a ten minute conversation with the parents but based on months of data since the child’s birth and a broader context of their development.
We’re incredibly excited to be the activators of this future.