Earlier this year, the Brant Community Healthcare System (BCHS) teamed up with the JonAyves Learning Club to launch a pilot program that connects youth who are experiencing mental health needs with virtual tutoring lessons.
Part of BCHS’s adolescent mental health outpatient services, the program was launched as a way to provide enhanced services for youth who required additional learning strategies and tutoring.
Over the summer, students from Grades 6 to 12, who were referred to their program by their clinicians, took part in 40 virtual instructional sessions, lasting 20 to 30-minutes each, twice a week for a month.
Maxwell Roach, owner of the JonAyves Learning Club, explained that the organization’s core approach to teaching is short-batched learning.
“They’re very short sessions, effectively anywhere between 15 to 30 minute sessions, and we focus on one main subject as well,” he said. “Everything is one-on-one, we don’t do any group sessions, and we’re really just here to support the students.”
Michael Marini, Manager of Communications and Public Affairs at BCHS, said that early results show that 100 per cent of the students involved in the program showed academic improvement and increased engagement, and that the youth demonstrated reduced anxiety, improved confidence and consistent attendance.
As far as a few milestones go, one Grade 6 student returned to class after 90-plus days away from school, a Grade 10 student rebuilt their confidence after leaving mid-semester, and Grade 12 students prepared for post-secondary school and workforce readiness.
Both Roach and Kristin Toushan-Blinkhorn, Clinical Manager of Outpatient Mental Health, SADV, Social Work, Complex Care Integrated Program at BCHS, said they were pleased with the results that they’ve seen with the pilot project so far.
“One of the biggest areas [of improvement] that I was so happy to see, and also wasn’t expecting because you just never know, was the attendance rates,” said Roach. “These patients who are in care, these students – they’re actually showing up to the sessions and these are high school students. There are some upper elementary school students, but with high school students, they could do effectively what they’d like; they could show up or they could not show up, they may even be busy, who knows, but they’re deciding to show up.”
Toushan-Blinkhorn added that she and her team are also looking forward to seeing where the program goes from here.
“I think we’re really happy with the results that we’ve seen so far with the pilot project. We certainly need to look at collecting more data, and advocating for more resources specifically for individuals and these adolescents in the mental health services here,” added Toushan-Blinkhorn. “But I think we’re looking forward to really continuing to work with Max and his team, and we know that this is a beneficial program for the community so we need to really look at what, where we possibly go from here.”
Roach explained that the partnership formed after meeting Bonnie Camm, BCHS President and CEO, at a Mayor’s Breakfast event.
“We ended up having a conversation and we were talking about what tutoring looked like, what education looked like, and then she started talking about mental health,” he said.
Conversations then grew into Roach and Toushan-Blinkhorn meeting and discussing what kind of opportunity was in front of them.
“It was a lot of learning. We had to really determine, what’s the possibility and what does the JonAyves Learning Club look like? Then we had to go back to the frontline teams and the psychiatrists that work with those with children and youth and say, ‘what are we seeing with these individuals who are coming into mental health services in the outpatient department and what are their needs?’” said Toushan-Blinkhorn. “I think it became pretty apparent that a number of children and their families would say that school was tough for them, right? So whether it be related to their symptoms of mental illness, or whether it be related to the environment – not conducive to how they were learning – or other factors, those were getting in the way of that. So it was pretty neat to look at this as an opportunity and really take the expertise of the team who’s doing the frontline work and then bring it all together.”
Toushan-Blinkhorn said that participants who participated in the program were referred by the clinician they work with through the outpatient services team, and that while the youth were working with Roach and his team, they were continuing to work with hers at the same time.
“The clinicians and mental health workers can see the improvement and will often say, it’s because all of their needs are being met,” she said. “I think that’s where the biggest benefit is – in the individual, one-on-one work that they’re doing. It’s so patient centered, right? It’s all about that individual and helping to improve the quality of life for them, so that they don’t have to stay in a mental health program.”
Marini said that to date, BCHS is not aware of any other hospital system in Ontario partnering in such a niche program and they look forward to continuing the program.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
