Suchergebnisse

This paper describes how supervised visitation programs in Florida rapidly transitioned from in‐person supervised visits to virtual, online visits during the COVID‐19 pandemic to protect the health of families and staff. Structured telephonic interviews and an online survey revealed that although most program directors had not previously developed guiding policies or hosted such visits, within weeks they were providing hundreds of online "virtual visits" between children and their non‐custodial parents to maintain the crucial parent–child relationship in a safe manner. Vignettes from this data provide lessons regarding parent and child reactions to virtual visits, advantages and disadvantages of virtual visits from the programs' perspectives, and levels of enthusiasm for using virtual visits going forward. In addition, the data includes recommendations for new program guidelines and protocols for the ongoing use of virtual visits. Although it is too early to call these policies best practices, the study does offer insight into the challenges and opportunities afforded by virtual visits and can inform disaster planning that supervised visitation programs develop to prepare for inevitable future disruptions in services to families.

AbstractPersistent stigma surrounding neurodivergent people still exists. This article advocates for changes to societal systems to improve the well‐being of neurodivergent individuals and families, beginning with widespread awareness and support. Our suggested approach to improve societal infrastructure includes large‐scale online educational training of multidisciplinary professionals who operate within these systems to increase understanding, awareness, support, and accommodations for neurodivergent people. Multidisciplinary professionals who have received neurodiversity training can advocate for their respective systems to improve services for neurodivergent clients. We describe the 2023 development of Florida State University's (FSU) new online Professional Certification in the Fundamentals of Neurodiversity. The asynchronous psychoeducational training provides continuing education credit to a wide range of professionals. The framework for this training and curriculum content are described. Such training, along with a set of accompanying open‐access resources, can be replicated by institutions in many languages and cultures to improve professionals' knowledge and skills across the globe.