(PS11-B50) Assessing the Disparities in Access to and Engagement with Tele-health and in Person Services by Families During the COVID-19 Era

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused considerable instability and insecurity in the daily lives of families and caregivers, resulting in multiple-level barriers to caregiver treatment access to children’s mental health services. Past research has established a link between children whose caregivers access treatment for them, and better treatment outcomes, warranting more research in this area. The pandemic has also ushered in a new era of virtual mental health care options, a modality of service delivery which may not yet be fully equipped to address the mental health needs of children, adolescents, and caregivers. Thus, this study explores the experiences of caregivers in attempting to access children’s mental health services since the beginning of the pandemic. This study will use Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) to explore and understand caregiver’s experiences of treatment access and availability in children’s mental health  services, both in-person and online, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, 15-20 caregivers with children between the ages of five and 12 exhibiting behavioral and/or emotional problems will be interviewed regarding their experiences navigating children’s mental health services since the pandemic began in New York (i.e., March 1, 2020). It will aim to explore participant-identified barriers and facilitators to treatment access since the COVID-19 pandemic began. There are no hypotheses for this study, as it is exploratory in nature. Currently, the impact of the pandemic on caregivers’ experiences of accessing children’s mental health services remains unclear. This study aims to not only address this gap in the literature but to also provide further nuance by introducing a new model of treatment access to children’s mental health services, as current models do not focus on treatment access, and do not consider the role of the pandemic in changing pathways to treatment access and utilization.