Seattle Children's has been providing care for children for over 100 years. The organization has more than 60 pediatric subspecialties, 10 regional clinics, and 22 outreach sites and clinics, providing inpatient, outpatient, diagnostic, surgical, rehabilitative, behavioral, emergency and outreach services to patients in in the greater Seattle area as well as Washington state, Montana, Alaska and Idaho. Seattle Children’s Research Institute has seven major centers dedicated to providing hope, care and cures to help every child live the healthiest and most fulfilling life possible.
Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at Seattle Children’s specializes in providing short-term care for children and teens through specialty clinics and an inpatient unit. It also connects patients and families to resources in the community and operates Washington’s Mental Health Referral Service for Children and Teens. In an effort to expand mental health access in Washington, Seattle Children’s opened a new Psychiatry Regional Clinic in the northwestern region of the State. With the advent of COVID-19, services were expanded to include telemedicine across all clinics in order to continue to provide safe care to patients using virtual tools.
The Psychiatry Family Advisory Board (PFAB) supports all psychiatric services at Seattle Children’s: Inpatient, Ambulatory Programs, and the Psych Emergency Department. The PFAB has grown significantly in the last three years and now has 16 parent members. Parent advisors are also embedded in other departmental and organizational work, including the Psychiatry Leadership Committee, the Equity Taskforce, and other quality improvement work committees in inpatient, outpatient, and specialty clinics.
Virtual participation was already an option for members so they “hit the ground running” with COVID-19, according to facilitator Nicole DeGrace. The PFAB has met virtually on a monthly basis since March 2020 and will continue to do so. The Microsoft Teams platform functions as a communication hub during and outside meetings and also houses all documentation.
As COVID-19 began, the hospital’s CMO attended the PFAB’s March 2020 meeting. Parents brought up the need for additional resources related to mental health and the pandemic to augment materials already in the Mental Health Resource Hub on the hospital website. Many of the mental health resources related to COVID-19 are a result of the PFAB’s work which can be accessed here.
During summer 2020, PFAB work focused on connecting with community partners to provide educational resources to schools – both generally about mental health and specifically about COVID.