Union: Telehealth can’t replace counselors

There is a student mental health crisis at community colleges and a new telehealth service will fail to meet the need, the colleges’ counseling staff said Tuesday.

Connecticut State Colleges and Universities announced last month a twoyear partnership with TimelyMD to provide around-the-clock telehealth services to all community college students, particularly during the pandemic.

But mental health professionals at the state’s 12 community colleges, who noted they were hardly consulted before the Board of Regents approved the purchase, said the state college system needs to focus on adequate in-person supports first.

“There was very little conversation with the existing mental health counselors in the community college system, who are already on the front lines, about what we really needed in order to assist the mental needs of our students,” said Lisa Slade, the director of counseling and wellness at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport.

The telehealth company partnership, priced at more than $659,000 per year, is funded by federal COVID-19 relief dollars. The service includes 12 scheduled individual counseling sessions per student, and unlimited health consultations and support through its on-demand platform, “TalkNow.”

“CSCU acknowledges the tremendous work (of ) our staff,” said Leigh Appleby, a spokesperson for the state university system, “and remains committed to an on-ground presence, but must respond to the overwhelming need right now.”

Appleby added face-toface services may still be limited or interrupted this school year, due to unforeseen COVID-19 variants, stagnant vaccination rates and other factors — while demand is “dramatically increased” as students balance their studies with job loss and disruption, illness and care-taking responsibilities.

But Kayla Garner, a recent graduate of Gateway Community College in New Haven, suggested at a Tuesday press conference cohosted by two labor unions — the Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges and American Federation of Teachers — that telehealth alternatives don’t cut it for students.

Garner said she reached out to Gateway the week before finals for support, but the wellness center was closed due to a lack of counselors.

“In some ways I do feel the school has failed me in that moment,” said Garner, who was later hospitalized for her deteriorating health.

Remote services like mental health hotlines, she noted, already existed: “What we need is onground, in-person support,” she said.

Seth Freeman, president of the community college faculty union, said only a couple of the schools have full-time, dedicated mental health professionals.

“While many of our colleges have a mental health counselor, these counselors are not dedicated to mental health counseling,” he wrote in an email. “Many must also do academic counseling, transfer counseling, disability counseling and/or career counseling. So, even where we do have mental health counselors, they are not able to perform mental health counseling 100 percent of the time.”

Gateway, where Garner attended, is one of the “extreme cases,” Freeman said, where some colleges have no mental health counselors at all.

Slade, the Housatonic counselor, too said that the state college system’s primary focus should be strengthening campus mental health services.

“We are experiencing the traumas of our students firsthand,” she said. “We are experiencing students who are having housing insecurities and food insecurities, and are in distress and crisis. And the sad part is we don’t have what we need to service them — and that’s the god’s honest truth.”

Slade cited the International Association of Counseling Services Accreditation’s standard that there be at least one licensed mental health counselor for every 1,000 to 1,500 students, and said Connecticut community colleges are not in compliance with that guidance.

She also said she lacks the proper software to do adequate case management.

Slade added on-campus counselors could be better situated to meet the needs of community college students. They need people “who look like them, who live in the same communities as them, who understand the struggles that they are experiencing,” she said.

Ruth Gonzalez, the director of the student and community life office at Northwestern Connecticut Community College in Winsted, said she sees the partnership as a chance to open a dialogue and gather data on mental health — but that one-on-one, on-campus relationships are “much better.”

“I live in the community that my campus is in,” she said. “So if we are producing not only academically balanced but also generally, overall balanced students, then we have a thriving community.”

Appleby, the CSCU spokesperson, responded that “this isn’t an either/or situation” — telehealth helps ensure students can access support at any time, any day of the week.

“CSCU remains committed to the work of assessing each campus’s capacity, surveying students to get a better handle on actual need and expanding partnerships with state agencies and community providers to improve access for our students,” he said.

The state college system announced the expanded mental health options on Aug. 23. Slated for this fall, the service was intended to help address COVID-19’s impact on student wellbeing, according to system officials.

“Access to health services — and particularly mental health services — has long been a major challenge for too many community college students,” said Terrence Cheng, the state colleges and universities president, when the partnership was announced.

He added the platform gives students access to mental health practitioners who have experience with college students.

“This is a major expansion of mental health services, and it is sure to make the college experience more manageable for the students we serve,” Cheng said.

David Levinson, the interim president of the community colleges, said the demand for mental health support has “increased dramatically,” and cited steps the system has taken to meet that need, including partnerships with local providers.

“However, this is the largest systemic investment to date and will provide much-needed access to critical health care services to all of our students,” he said.