News & Resources

Benefits of Telehealth for Clinical Treatment and Services

The Center for Child & Family Health’s clinical treatment and services are currently available via telehealth. Learn more about the benefits of telehealth:

Most children are thriving with virtual therapy

Using our connections with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, we have obtained guidance from national experts on effective virtual therapy. With this and our own internal expertise, we have implemented strategies that make virtual therapy appealing and effective for children and parents. We have also developed capabilities to overcome most technical barriers.

For younger children, our therapeutic approach has always more heavily involved parents in treatment, so the young child’s short attention span and/or virtual work is less problematic. For teens, we are seeing often that virtual therapy is more productive due to teens’ comfort in virtual spaces. Teens make particular use of the “chat” features in our virtual platform to type their difficult feelings and experiences rather than speaking them.

Virtual therapy is improving therapy accessibility

Families are finding it much easier to attend weekly sessions without the time and hassle of traveling to and from sessions. Daily hassles can often be a source of therapy inequity, so we believe having a virtual option is reducing inequity by making sessions more accessible.

Masking affects therapy’s effectiveness

CCFH adheres to Duke Health masking regulations, which require masking for in-person therapy. Masking for therapy, especially with children, can be an impediment to subtle and not subtle verbal and non-verbal communication in therapy. Ultimately, masked therapy can interfere with the effectiveness of the relationship between the therapist and the client.

Posted on June 30, 2022