Dr. Lexi Backstrom: Riverside County Office of Education

Lexi Backstrom and Hector Murrieta discussed the Riverside County Office of Education's CAREspace program, which provides free mental health services to everyone in Riverside County. The conversation also touched on the office's creative programs, including Lucky PAWS, a pet adoption program. CAREspace services can be accessed by calling 951-276-CARE (2273) or by going to www.rcoe.us/carespace and filling out the online referral form.

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Transcript

Lexi Backstrom

SPEAKERS

Lexi, Hector

Hector  00:08

Hello and welcome to episode two of the school health connection podcast. My name is Hector Murrieta and I am your host. I am also the proud principal of Sierra High School in the San Bernardino City Unified School District. A deep and heartfelt thank you to the California school based health Alliance and the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools for making this podcast possible. Currently in the state of California, there are approximately 400 school based health centers, and in about three out of four of those SBHCs, that is 77% mental and behavioral health services are provided. So that means that mental and behavioral health services are more common in these school based health centers than medical services. Many schools across the state are interested in providing these services to their students, given the struggles they are facing, especially after the pandemic. With us today is Dr Lexi Backstrom to engage in a conversation about how the Riverside County Office of Education and its superintendent's Mental Health Initiative is offering care space services to students across Riverside County. The hope and intent is that listeners can learn about care space and glean from the conversation meaningful and useful information and ideas as they embark in their development and implementation of school based health centers in their schools and communities. Dr Lexi Backstrom is the administrator of student behavioral health and support for the Riverside County Office of Education, alternative education. From now on, I'll just say RCOE. Welcome to the school based health or school health connection podcast, and thanks for sharing. Please share with our listeners more about you and your role at RCOE. Lexi, 

Lexi  02:02

 Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor and a blessing to be here today with all of you. So as Hector mentioned, I serve as the administrator of student behavioral health and support for the Riverside County Office of Education, and I have been very blessed to serve to oversee our care space program for our Riverside County Superintendent of Schools, Dr Edwin Gomez's Mental Health Initiative. And so this is a really great opportunity where we provide free mental health and related services to everyone in Riverside County. And in addition to that, I do serve an alternative education and in this role, we have a behavioral health program, where we've hired licensed clinicians to be able to serve our students directly in our community schools and our CBK charter. I'm also a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, so mental health is really near and dear to my heart as well. 

Hector  02:54

 Wow. Thank you, Lexi, that's an impressive resume. Thank you. Hey, and according to your web page and the YouTube content you have that RCOE, which we'll provide links for, carespace just wrapped up its third year in operation, so congratulations on that. 

Lexi  03:13

Thank you. Thank you. 

Hector  03:14

 Yeah, also the care. So the word care in care space, it's an acronym stands for Community, Access, Relationships and Emotional Wellness. So before we get into how the vision of care space came about, please share with our listeners what exactly a care space is. You know, how many districts does it serve? How many and which types of students are served? What are the services that care spaces are providing? 

Lexi  03:40

Yeah, and that's a really great place to start. Is what is care space? Because when people hear care space, they want to know, is it a physical location? And it is a physical location. Our superintendent had the vision of wanting to serve everyone in Riverside County. So care space has 11 physical locations where students, families, parents, community members, staff and school districts can access direct services for mental health. And so these services include anything from individual counseling to family counseling to parent workshops, staff trainings and classroom presentations. And currently, we have served 23 of our 23 Riverside County School District. So we're very proud of that. Every quarter our districts are accessing these services to further benefit the mental health needs of those that they serve.

Hector  04:33

Wow. Again, that's impressive. Thank you for sharing that. I'm sure we can have a full podcast on just, you know, you know, care space itself and what they offer. Now, I'm sure we'll get to that at some point. But you know, because many of our listeners are practitioners in different capacities, in schools and outside of schools, and because all successful initiatives start with a well defined and grounded vision. And you've you've alluded to it, you. Please share with our listeners how the vision for care space came about, and in your role and participation in the development and implementation of that vision,  

Lexi  05:09

Absolutely so. Again, we're very blessed at the Riverside County Office of Education to serve our superintendent of schools, Dr Gomez, and he actually set out four visions that he has. He calls him his four initiatives. And he has his financial literacy initiative, his literacy by fifth grade initiative, his equity and inclusive practices initiative, and our topic today, the Mental Health Initiative. And what he really wanted to make sure is that everyone in Riverside County was served. And so he actually worked in collaboration with my former executive director, Dr Chuck Fisher, to really bring that vision to life. And when he was asked, Do you know anyone that could help implement this program? That's where my name came up. And I got the opportunity to work with a committee to further discuss what care space could look like, there was a group of four of us that came up with the name care space. So that was a, definitely an innovative name, as you mentioned earlier, it stands for community, access, relationships and emotional wellness. Because we don't do this on our own. We definitely do this in a collaborative process. And then from there, it was, well, we got to put out an RFP. We've got to see if we can get, you know, community partners that can support with this work, and from there, I kind of took the lead on developing what our care spaces would look like. As I mentioned, they are physical locations. We offer in person services, we offer telehealth services in English and in Spanish. And so we wanted to make sure that this was really a welcoming environment. So there was a lot of intention around what the design would look like for care space, we kind of had options for our students and staff to select from a beach theme or a mountain theme or a desert theme, as you could probably imagine, nobody chose the desert. So we have some beach themed care spaces and we have some mountain themed care spaces. And so again, just very intentional with what that design looks like. So when you enter into a care space, you can see, you know, a beautiful mural. You can see graphics and pictures canvases that really kind of bring the outdoors in. We have trees throughout them. We have different plants. We have a ping pong table. We have different snacks and drinks, because we know our students can sometimes not have food in the mornings or in the afternoons, or, you know, when they go home, so we want to make sure that they have access to that as well. But most importantly, we have a therapist at all of our locations, and that therapist provides those services that we talked about earlier. And then our therapist can also go into our districts as well. So that was kind of the design stage of care space, and then really being intentional on how are we going to receive referrals. So with care space, again, our vision from Dr Gomez was we need to serve everyone in Riverside County. So what is that going to look like? So working very directly with our creative services and web services team to develop a website where we receive all of our referrals from care space, and then can provide services directly from there.

Hector  08:05

Wow, fascinating. I certainly have a vision of what you're painting there, because I haven't, I haven't seen a care space myself. 

Lexi  08:14

Well, you should come visit one.

Hector  08:15

 I'm going to and actually, I live walking distance from the county office.

Lexi  08:19

Okay, perfect. Well, we'll have to schedule that for you,

Hector  08:23

but so, yeah, so you know, you mentioned, you know, the vision and the design phase. So you know, for our listeners, you know, there's always that first one, you know, there's that first care space or the second one, yeah. So please share with our visitors one, or excuse me, our listeners, what went into, you know, that first one? How did you select, you know, that location, for example, you mentioned that you have therapists in each one. I'm sure our listeners are really interested in knowing. Okay, well, how did you how did you hire a therapist? What did you do to get one and place them in that location? You'll talk about that? 

Lexi  09:01

Yeah, absolutely. So I would love to say we hit the ground running with one or two, but we actually hit the ground running with six. So we opened six up at one time, and those specifically were opened on our alternative education school sites. We were on a time crunch. School was about to start, and we wanted to make sure that we had these locations set up for our students and all of Riverside County. And so it took a lot of multitasking. I work very closely with my secretary. It was just her and I at first getting these set locations set up, but then our team has grown from there. And so what that really looked like was making sure we got all of the orders coming in, working with our vendors to make sure that everything got set up, working directly with our facilities team, our operational support services, to ensure that we had everything set up that we needed to so we also did do a ribbon cutting ceremony, and that was really exciting. And. Was in September of 2021, and that was an opportunity to really showcase one of our care spaces, which was at David Long and that was really great, because we had our Board of Education and our superintendent, Dr Edwin Gomez, there to really kind of symbolize the opening of care space. And so when it came to how we were choosing those community partners, it did start with one community partner, and that was a team that was part of the RFP process, and we chose Riverside Latino commission, and they were our first partners to do this work with us. They're phenomenal. They're still our partners today. We're really grateful for them, and we worked very closely with them to ensure that each of our therapists that were placed at each of those first six locations had cultural competence in those locations, so they either grew up in that area or they worked in that area so that they really could tie to the community they were serving that was really important to us.

Hector  10:50

Wow, yeah. How much time would you say went between, you know, that design phase, that visioning phase to, you know, the first six, because you're mentioning and for the benefit of some of our listeners that aren't in our profession, you know, RFP, I imagine that's the process rcoe goes through to hire or to get contracts, I imagine, right? 

Lexi  11:14

Yeah, 

Hector  11:14

And all that takes time. So how much time would you say went from again, that, you know, that visioning process, that design process to the first six

Lexi  11:23

Absolutely so actually, it was very, very quick. So I actually got hired in April of 2021 and we launched our first six in August, September of 2021 so we had a very tight turnaround. I definitely don't recommend that. It was, it was really hard to get those first six up and running. So we had we had a few months, but we did it because, again, we we serve an amazing superintendent, and this is his initiative, and we had all of the support from our contracts department to our facilities to our maintenance team, and we all work together to make sure that all of those spaces were up and running in that time frame. And if you do get a chance to see our very first video you'll get to hear from our Executive Director of Operational Support Services, Matt Snellings, just talking about the work that went into that design and being able to work collaboratively to make these spaces come to life for our students and our families.

Hector  12:13

Well, yeah, that is impressive. I thought you were going to say, oh you know, took two years. you know, year and a half. Oh my goodness. That was that was quick so  you clearly had your work cut out for you.

Lexi  12:26

Yes, it was. It was an amazing endeavor. The the final five that we did. Beyond that, we had more time to work on those. But those, those first six, we we definitely need to get up and running for our students and our families and our districts.

Hector  12:40

Hey. So what's evident from your responses and from the video that you alluded to, because I watched it as well, so it's clear that that care space, that initiative, it really couldn't have taken off without strong partnerships. And I know I've said that about our work at Sierra, and so it's a common denominator in this work. So please share with our listeners you know, talk about that you know, your experience with, you know, establishing and nourishing and maintaining these strong partnerships so that your the care space initiative could grow,

Lexi  13:12

Yes and and as I mentioned, we had really strong partnerships internally within RCOE, but we definitely could not do this work with our community partners. And so as I mentioned, the first one was the Riverside Latino commission working very closely with them to have them staff our locations. But now, to date, you know, we just wrapped up our third year, we actually have three community partners that provide direct services across our 11 locations. And so shout out to Riverside University Health Systems, behavioral health and University of California Riverside School of Medicine, they do a phenomenal job ensuring that our direct services are meeting the needs of all of those that we are serving. 

Hector  13:50

That's awesome. 

Lexi  13:50

We also built community partnerships with the Boys and Girls Club and Desert Hot Springs, and part of that was for locations, and so the Boys and Girls Club and Desert Hot Springs actually give us free location so that we can provide our mental health services through care space to those communities. So that was quite a blessing as well. And then from there, we added the desert healthcare district and Foundation and the rap foundation, so they provided us with funding to actually open our 11th location, which is located in Desert Hot Springs, and then we also have the California school based health Alliance. And so I had the opportunity to meet Sang, who worked very closely with Dr ESA, who's our administrator of health services at Riverside County. And she started sharing about the school based health Alliance and what that could look like within care space. And so she got the opportunity to come and visit one of our care spaces and be able to give us that certification in eight of our 11 locations. And the reason it was eight of 11 locations is because eight of our locations are on or near school sites, where our three locations with Riverside University Health System are more in community areas. Is, and so that was a really great opportunity to join that 77% that you mentioned earlier of providing mental health services. And then our final community partner is with the Department of Animal Services, which is for our lucky pause service, which I know we're gonna talk to you a little bit later.

Hector  15:17

Wow, yeah. And that sounds like we could totally relate to it with our work at Sierra High School. Yeah, the partnerships can't do this without strong partners. Hey, going back to so the locations, which kind of takes us to, what I'm sure our listeners would be interested in knowing is, you know, they've learned about the vision, establishing a strong vision, and then actualizing that vision and getting the care space going. So then the up the maintenance of it, the sustainability. So what is, you know, the day to day. What does that look like? Because obviously, Riverside's a large county. You can't be everywhere at once, 

Lexi  15:55

absolutely, 

Hector  15:56

But care space, it's operating. So yeah, talk to talk to our listeners about that, how what's the day to day like? What's a typical day like for you and in the operation of these care spaces?

Lexi  16:10

Yeah? So definitely getting into the weeds of it. So if you are looking to create your own wellness centers, these are things that you're definitely going to want to take note of. The first thing is that referral process that I mentioned earlier. So anyone who's interested in care space and those free mental health services that we offer through Riverside County Office of Education, they would go on our website to complete a referral. And so we have to receive those referrals each and every day. We have a 48 hour turnaround from the moment we receive a referral to getting back to that referral for those basic screening questions and then getting them connected to a therapist. Realistically, we get about 100 new referrals for services every single month, so there's a lot of maintenance in making sure that we receive those professionally, we respond to those times sensitively, and that we connect them to the services that they need. There's also all the phone calls that come in. Carespace does have a phone number. It did take me a while to find one that had care in it, but we found one with a phone provider. So our number is (951)276-CARE, and that phone number is for anyone to call and ask questions about care space. We also have a wait list. So as you can imagine, any time there's free services, there's a high demand, and we do only have those 11 locations, so making sure that we are monitoring that wait list and making sure we're getting back to people in a good time frame, so that they're not waiting on their services. So that's a lot of the day to day. On the therapist side, we have services back to back all day long. So our therapists are providing in person services, they're providing telehealth services. They're going into our districts to do classroom presentations and staff trainings and parent workshops. And then we also have our parent workshop calendar. So if you have not seen that parent workshop calendar, it is completely free, and you can access it, and your parents can access free parent workshops through that calendar, and we change those every month so they can be anywhere from childhood depression to childhood anxiety to self care for parents, and those are completely free. And so every quarter, we design those with our creative services team, and we push those out in English and in Spanish so that services can be accessible for your convenience as well.

Hector  18:23

So is there like a care space manager at each one?

Lexi  18:26

No, 

Hector  18:27

How does that work? 

Lexi  18:28

Yeah, actually, that question comes up quite a bit. And no, there's actually not. It is me and my program assistant, Jasmine, so we manage the care spaces together. And then again, those amazing community partners do such an incredible job. And so after three years, we've really learned what works and what doesn't. And so Jasmine actually has meetings with each of our community partners throughout the month to make sure everything's on track, make sure we're getting feedback on where they're at with clients, and being able to move forward from there. And then I have the blessing and opportunity now that we're in these three years to continue to support, you know, Dr Gomez's vision and make sure that we're adding new things each year. And so actually, in the coming weeks, he and I will be filming our annual care space update with some exciting updates to share. So I hope you'll tune in and join us for that.

Hector  19:15

Yes, I know I'll be looking forward to it. And one thing I know I'm looking forward to kind of selfishly, and I kind of saved it to the end on purpose, and you mentioned it lucky paws, yes, tell us about lucky.paws,

Lexi  19:28

Well, I always say, Who are my animal lovers out there? Because lucky paws is definitely something for you. So lucky paws really started from the vision of we know that pets are wellness support. We know that our animals can play a huge part in our mental health and wellness, and that's actually exactly what lucky paws stands for. Lucky Paws, PAWS being Pets Are Wellness Support. And so this was really a partnership that I really sought to kind of expand within our schools and our districts, because I. Four dogs and four cats, and they're all rescues, and my husband said, No more. So I wanted to find a way where I can take my passion of serving through mental health and my passion of animals and find a way to put those together. So what lucky paws really does. This is an opportunity for anyone who works and lives in Riverside County, but also beyond as well, we've had people from Lake Forest and surrounding areas in San Bernardino County adopt through this program. And so what lucky paws does is it gives you an opportunity to adopt a pet for your family. So you go down to the shelter, which we partner with our Department of Animal Services, which is the county shelter off Van Buren and Jurupa, and you can pick out as many pets, dogs, cats, sometimes they have horses, sometimes they have guinea pigs that you would like to adopt, and through our generous donors, Lucky paws funds, the spay, the neuter, the pet adoption fee and the vaccines for that new pet for your family

Hector  21:01

And see you found a way to have more pets, you know, an extended sort of,

Lexi  21:07

Absolutely, that's and that, and that's been a blessing. Through the program, we've actually had over 70 pet adoptions go through lucky paws. So, we've been able to fund that through our donors and really make a difference in people's lives and kind of hear the impact that it has had on them. And we've heard feedback back from our lucky paws adopters, and they've said how, how much of a benefit it is to have that pet in their family. So we're really grateful for the humans that we're saving and the pets as well, 

Hector  21:35

Right? Wow. Well, Lexi, I gosh, I want to thank you for your time today and congratulate you and Riverside County Office of Education for your innovative work with care spaces and with Lucky paws, it's I can see a part two of this coming. Oh yeah, I'm sure we can do a part two of this. But before we close out, I just want to give you an opportunity if you if there are any final thoughts, reflections that you'd like to share, this would be a great time for that. 

Lexi  22:05

Yeah, thank you for that, and just thank you for this opportunity. I think it's always a blessing when we have the opportunity to share about work that we're doing in a neighboring county and support each other through the work that you guys are doing in San Bernardino County as well, because you guys have some incredible initiatives as well, and incredible impact that you're making on students and families. So think it's really great when we can work together. And as always, I think anytime you have an initiative that really focuses on making a huge impact, like care space has, we've served over 20,000 students and families through this program, that you need really strong leadership. And so again, I just really want to thank our Riverside County Board of Education for the support and our Riverside County Superintendent of Schools, Dr Edwin Gomez,

Hector  22:50

Yes, wow. Well, to you our listeners, also want to extend an immense thank you for joining us and sharing this with others. You'll find a link to the riverside county of education, care, space page in the show notes, also, I want to put a plug in and invite all of you to mark your calendars for the Inland Empire school health Symposium on October 4 at the IEHP campus in Rancho Cucamonga. More detailed information will follow. And with that, thank you very much once again, and we'll see you in the next episode of School Health Connection.