Wilton Public Schools in Connecticut has partnered with PresenceLearning, the leading provider of live online special education-related services to K-12 schools, to provide teletherapy training and the PresenceLearning online therapy platform to its school-based clinical teams following the district’s closure and shift to online learning. Using PresenceLearning’s award-winning, proprietary platform and teletherapy training, the district will be able to continue providing services remotely to hundreds of students.
“Our staff got really excited about teletherapy during the initial PresenceLearning demo, and since then we continue to get positive feedback on how intuitive the platform is,” said Andrea Leonardi, the assistant superintendent of schools for student services for Wilton Public Schools. “Everyone is very optimistic about meeting the needs of our students during such uncertain times.”
“Conducting therapy online can be daunting at first, but we know how great it can be when done well,” said PresenceLearning CEO Kate Eberle Walker. “We are here to support the special education team and the families of Wilton Public Schools in making sure that therapy continues in the most impactful way, ensuring continued progress for students in these tumultuous times.”
This week, the district had 41 clinicians go through PresenceLearning’s live training sessions to ensure they are comfortable with an online environment before rolling out the services to students. By next week, the district hopes to have its students receive speech-language therapy, occupational therapy, individual and group counseling, including dialectical and cognitive behavioral therapy, and more direct special education services through the PresenceLearning online therapy platform.
Within the platform, clinicians have access to an online room built specifically to deliver therapy services and an extensive library of teletherapy resources. They can also upload their own resources. Clinicians additionally have access to PresenceLearning’s team of clinical experts through online office hours, access to the company’s proprietary Telehealth Institute self-guided training modules, and daily live technical support during school hours.
“A lot of the resources in the platform are goal-directed and are easily transferable to what our clinicians are already working on with students,” said Leonardi. “Teletherapy services will help students have a more structured schedule and it allows us to deliver the services as outlined in students’ IEPs. There will be challenges along the way as things continue to change rapidly in the current environment, but it is comforting to know we have support from a company that has been successfully delivering online therapy services for years.”
To learn more about PresenceLearning, visit https://www.presencelearning.com/schools/covid-19-teletherapy/.
About PresenceLearning
PresenceLearning, Inc. is the leading provider of live online special education-related services to K-12 schools. The company connects speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and behavioral and mental health professionals with students through its proprietary online platform, and has delivered more than 2.5 million teletherapy sessions to hundreds of K-12 schools and districts across the U.S. through its network of nearly 1,000 certified clinicians. For more information, visit www.presencelearning.com.
