Disclaimers and Expectations about Psychoeducational Tutoring By Telephone Organization for Psychoeducational Tutoring (OPT)

jstray@gmail.com

1. OPT may deliver parent training (by videoconference) and/or psychoeducational tutoring (by phone). OPT delivers education, and not medical or psychotherapeutic or counseling interventions. People who learn from OPT are students and not patients or therapy clients. OPT personnel are educators and not clinicians. Many of the subjects that are taught through the tutoring get some coverage in school health courses. Conversations of a child with the tutor are aimed simply at increasing the enjoyment of, and skill in, social interaction, and not at solving problems -- the conversations are different from those conducted by a counselor or therapist. Anyone delivering services through OPT does so in the capacity of an educator, not a "mental health professional," not a "counselor," and not a "therapist," and not a "child care provider." (This is true even if the educator does happen to be licensed as a clinician.)

2. OPT’s role:

does NOT include diagnosis of any mental illness or disorder;

does NOT include assessment of anyone’s danger, or lack of danger, to self or others;

does NOT include solving any particular life problem that the child or parent is grappling with, even though the skills taught in the curriculum may help the child or parent to make decisions and solve problems in general;

does NOT include anything that requires training in medicine or psychotherapy or counseling;

does NOT include providing "child care" -- i.e. babysitting, making sure the child is safe, making sure the child is under the care of a responsible caretaker. (Child care is not something that we would consider trying to provide by phone; children should be under the care of a physically present responsible caretaker as appropriate for the child's age, with or without the telephone tutoring.)

3. Because this service is NOT medical, medical insurance will NOT reimburse anything for it. (We retain this statement just to emphasize that we are not a medical intervention, even though at present no one is charged any money for OPT’s services.)

The following sections refer primarily to the psychoeducational tutoring part of OPT’s services.

4. While we try to have tutors commit to continuing with their student for at least a year, we do not have the legal right to require that. Thus there is the possibility that a tutor can discontinue the tutoring relationship. This may induce a feeling of loss in the child, or may make it more difficult for another tutor to pick up where the preceding one left off.

5. The tutors try to make the conversations private. But it is possible that someone will overhear parts of the phone conversations. If you think that a great deal of harm could be done by someone’s overhearing part of a tutoring conversation, or someone’s learning that your child is receiving tutoring, then please discuss this with us; you may wish not to sign up for the tutoring, or to try to make special arrangements.

6. The tutors get supervision, and some of the supervisory sessions are in groups of other tutors. We ask the tutors to use the child’s first name or initial only. But other tutors may be able to identify the child if they happen to know your family. Or, a tutor may inadvertently also mention your last name. If this degree of lack of privacy is not tolerable, you may wish not to sign up, or to ask for some special arrangement.

7. Email communication is not completely confidential. If the possibility of a breach of confidentiality by an email provider is not tolerable, you may wish not to sign up, or ask for some special arrangement.

8. We gather lots of information so as to decide best upon what activities to do and to document and celebrate progress. We expect you to cooperate with us in giving lots of information about your child’s functioning and various other things. Answering questions is part of the responsibility you take on with the tutoring.

9. Every so often your child may pass a “milestone” of some sort of achievement. When the tutor communicates this to you, please celebrate with the child and help the child feel good about the accomplishment.

10. Even if you decide for your child to quit the tutoring, and even if that is very early on, we would still like to keep on asking you how the child is doing, and to carry out other measurements, every six months. We want to keep up with our students and see how things turn out.

11. The expectation is that the student will “show” for 80% of appointments. If any more than 20% of phone calls the tutor makes result in no connection with the student, the tutoring may be discontinued.

12. When an appointment is made, that is the one time that is guaranteed that the tutor is available that day. If something comes up ahead of time, and you want to ask the tutor to reschedule, you may do so, but there is no guarantee that the tutor will be able to. If the appointment cannot be kept, please let the tutor know as far ahead of time as possible. Please do not wait until the time of the appointment, and then tell the tutor that the appointment cannot be kept or ask the tutor to call later that day. (But even this is much better than not answering the phone call at all!)

13. Even after all these years of cell phone usage, the question about whether holding a phone next to the head for a long time may cause health problems is not fully decided.

In view of the uncertainty that exists, we want to insist that your child either use a land line, or use a cell phone with either a headset or on speakerphone so that the cell phone is held at least a foot away from the head. If the child does use a headset or earbuds, we'd also like to ask you to make sure that the child doesn't have the volume turned up so high that there could be damage to hearing; listening to audible devices that are set too loud appears to be a widespread hazard to the hearing of young people.

14. It could possibly come about that the directors of the tutoring program, in collaboration with the tutor, will come to decide that the child will not benefit from the tutoring; it could be that a parent will also decide this. In order for the tutoring to proceed, both the directors of the program and the parents should desire for it to continue; if either become convinced that it is not beneficial to the child, it may be terminated by either.

15. Please give the tutor any phone numbers, email addresses, and mailing addresses you want the tutor to be able to try. Also please get the tutor’s addresses and phone numbers, as well as those of the directors of the program. Please stay in touch with the tutor and the administrators and respond to messages as quickly as you can. If you can’t get in touch with your tutor, please let the director of the program know as soon as possible, at jstray@gmail.com (Joseph Strayhorn). Please check your email. If you don’t respond to emails from program administration, the services may be terminated.

16. If your child’s tutor misses or cancels or otherwise cannot do sessions at the agreed upon frequency, please let Dr. Strayhorn (jstray@gmail.com) know as soon as possible. No one is well served by letting the tutoring sessions fail to be done while the program administration does not know about it.

17. If two parents disagree with each other about whether to engage in the tutoring, the one that objects to it will prevail. We do not want to take on the task of dealing with conflict between parents about whether the tutoring should be done or not.

18. If you want to take a break from tutoring for a month or more, there is not a guarantee that you will be able to start back. In other words, you can’t put the job of your tutor on hold with the expectation that the person (or the Organization) will be available whenever you want.

19. Please do not start the tutoring with the assumption that it will be a short term intervention. It exerts its effects slowly. Expect a year's work, minimum. Sometimes more than one year is required for maximum benefit.

20. Please do not regard the tutoring as an emergency intervention. If there is an issue of self-harm, harm to others, or other danger, please make sure that you engage with a professional who is qualified to directly help you assess the risk of danger and reduce it. The tutors are NOT qualified to intervene on issues of harm, even though the subject matter covered in the tutoring can possibly eventually help with the quality of life and with habits of nonviolence and self-care.

21. The first couple of weeks are generally a trial period. At the end of that time, we and you will know better whether the tutoring will be likely to work on a longer term basis.

22. The rationale behind phone tutoring is to have regular sessions, often, so that “time on task” can accumulate. The expectation at the start of tutoring is that 5 or 6 half-hour sessions will be scheduled each week, and that these sessions will be kept, regularly. The intervention cannot be given on an “as convenient” basis. If enough other things are going on in your and the child’s lives that it’s not feasible for us to log in 5 or 6 half hour sessions per week, and to continue this for at least several months, please talk with the director or administrator about this (not just the tutor) before we launch; it may be best in this circumstance not to begin tutoring.

Please sign below, if you have read and agree to the above, and want to try the tutoring despite these provisos.

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