COE Connections Episode 7: Rachel Haine-Schlagel

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: 
So I was conducting research on parent participation in child services for many years before becoming a parent that needed to utilize some of these services, and my experience on the consumer side has been so humbling in terms of informing my research, as I found that navigating services was difficult, even with all of my privilege as an expert in the field, and my race and my socioeconomic status and all this has made me just have tremendous respect for the effort that parents expend to get their children the support they need.

(music plays)

Michael Klitzing: 
Welcome to COE Connections, the SDSU. College of Education, research and Scholarship Podcast Series. I'm, your host, Rachel Haine-Schlagel, Associate Dean for research.

Just kidding. I'm obviously not. I'm Mike Klitzing, and I'm the Communications Officer in the College of Education at SdDSU. A Hispanic serving institution on the land of the Kumeyaay. I usually produce this series behind the scenes, but today, as we kick off our second season of COE connections. I'm hosting in place of Rachel.

And it is for very good reason, because our guest today happens to be Rachel Haine-Schlagel, associate dean for research in the College of Education and an associate professor of child and family development. Rachel's research over the past 20 years has focused on enhancing the effectiveness of child mental health and social services in community agencies serving minoritized and low income populations. Her passion is developing and implementing tools to help providers and caregivers work together as partners in child services.

One of her major accomplishments has been to develop a toolkit, to promote caregiver participation in community-based child mental health services with funding from the National Institute of Mental Health. This toolkit has since been adapted for multiple services, including a home visiting program to prevent child neglect, a parent coaching intervention for young children at high likelihood for autism and autism diagnostic evaluations.

She puts her research as well as her personal experiences as a parent of 2 children with developmental needs to use as the family advocacy discipline lead within the HRSA-funded San Diego leadership education in neuro developmental and related disabilities also called San Diego LEND a leadership training program that is run out of UC San Diego and SDSU.

Welcome, Rachel, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.

Rachel Haine-Schlagel 
Thank you Mike, it's it's nice to be here.

Michael Klitzing: 
Yeah. So how does it feel to be on the other side of an interview?

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: 
It it feels good. It I don't know it. It's kind of fun hearing you do the whole intro thing. And yeah, I'm excited to get started. 

Michael Klitzing:
The listeners didn't get to hear me screw up several times, but you did so we're off to a good start here. 

Rachel Haine-Schlagel:
Luckily we booked a nice chunk of time to record this right? 

Michael Klitzing:
Absolutely. So you know, I have a few questions for you today. You know the drill. My first question, why do you study what you do?

Rachel Haine-Schlagel:
Great question, Mike. So why do I study what I do? So I I've always always been interested in parents influences on their children. And when I was first doing my really intensive clinical training for my doctorate in clinical psychology, we have to do a one year internship before we can receive our degree, and I did mine here at UC San Diego and at Rady Children's Hospital. It was my first experience working really intensively with families, and I felt really unprepared to engage the families in the work that we were doing. When families would come to sessions. There was real variability in how much they were interested in being a part of them. Sometimes they wanted to just wait in the lobby and I realized I didn't feel like I had a lot of skills to sort of engage them in the process sort of meet them where they are in terms of how they feel about being involved in in their child's treatment. What does that mean for me to ask them to be involved in their child's treatment. A lot of questions came up. A lot of just a lot of feeling like there's a need for that. Those kind of supports, and certainly the literature, the Research Literature Board that out as well. So that is my kind of original sort of path to this work.

Michael Klitzing:
So my second question is actually a request. Can you please describe an example of the impact that your research has had on the community?

Rachel Haine-Schlagel:
I think I have a couple of things I wanna say about that. So one is somewhat professional, and one is more personal. So on a professional note. You mentioned in the really nice intro you gave that I have developed a toolkit that's designed to help providers and parents and caregivers work together effectively. And there have been several adaptations of that toolkit, and I'm really proud of where those adaptations have have ended up. So, for example, some of the tools were put into a parent coaching intervention that you mentioned. It's called Project Impact for Toddlers. Some of my colleagues in my department have really led a lot of the work on testing and disseminating that intervention. And it's used very regularly throughout our region and throughout the State to help families help their kids who are at high likelihood for autism or been diagnosed with autism develop social communication skills in the home environment, in the natural environment that families are living in. And I feel really proud that my tools have become a part of that intervention. I'm also really proud of the the adaptation that we made for the psychologists who are delivering autism, diagnostic evaluation results. The the toolkit we created for that setting has now is now sort of part of the standard onboarding process for new psychologists at Rady Children's Hospital. And so there really has been a a quite a broad reach of my work out into the community, which is what I what I've always wanted to have happen. Of course there's room for a lot more. But I'm very proud of those things. 

On a more of a personal note. You also mentioned in my bio that I have two children, and they have had some developmental needs in their lives. I've been really proud of my ability to take what I've learned in my research and to use it in the way I interact with providers. So my interest in this topic, and my work, in parent and caregiver participation way, predated, becoming a parent. And even my work specifically with autism services, was happening for a few years before I became a parent, let alone became a parent who had children with developmental needs. And so I've had this foundation of knowledge and experience, working with families and understanding the literature and working with colleagues. And I've brought that to my interactions with providers. I try to elicit from them what I am hoping all providers can do more of, and asometimes I get really really good feedback about that. And so I've really appreciated that as well.

Michael Klitzing: 
Yeah, that's really interesting to me, because  almost feels like the reverse of how that might work. Some researchers may have a personal experience that inspires them to work with these these communities and these populations where I feel like with you it's occurred in reverse, and I'm just kind of curious if the way that having that personal experience well into your career - did that change anything about about the way you viewed your work?

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: 
Oh, it definitely did. , I'll say a few things about it. One, I think, that I was in an extremely unique position in terms of my abilities as a consumer, right as a child services consumer. You know, I became a consumer of child services with all of this knowledge. And so I guess I'm answering the reverse. I'm thinking more about how my work has informed my experience as a parent rather than my experience as a parent informing my work. I also think that when I became a parent who needed to utilize some of these types of services. I think my focus shifted, maybe even more, to the providers and their experience, and wanting them to understand the parent experience more. I think I've always been interested in in both parties and helping them come together. The providers and the families. I do think that my interest, since becoming a parent, and since utilizing some of these types of services, has become more focused on providers, understanding the the family perspective. And I, and that's one of the great things that I love about LEND, which you mentioned in the in the intro, is that I am bringing both my personal and my professional experiences to this group of trainees who are primarily working professionals working with developmentally disabled kids or people in training to become working professionals and being able to get them really thinking about families, experiences, and perspectives. So I think that's been a big way that both my personal and professional lives have influenced each other.

Michael Klitzing: 
Yeah, given that, a lot of the people that are that are listening may not be part of the the mental health field and may be coming at this from a different background in in the College of Education, I was just wondering if you could paint a picture for us of owhat it means when we're talking about interventions like Project Impact for Toddlers, for instance. What is that? What do these things look like?

Rachel Haine-Schlagel:
That's a great question. I often take for granted that everybody everybody knows what I'm talking about. Very often services such as the ones that I've been working in like Project Impact for Toddlers or the home visiting program that you mentioned for child families with child neglect cases open in child welfare involve a provider working with either parents separately or parents and kids together to provide support, to develop a lot of developing skills. So in some ways, for projecting, but in some ways helping the parent become like a full time interventionist at home. Not that they're expected to do intervention all the time with their child. They're expected to play and have fun, and meet all of their responsibilities and in life, but that, you know, maybe there's opportunities in bath time, in meal time, in grocery shopping together to facilitate the child social communication. So the parent is being asked to learn something new. In the mental health services that I've worked in. It's it's broader in that there could be anything that a therapist is working on with a child or with a family, and the goal is to involve the parent in whatever way makes the most sense. So it's not that the parent necessarily needs to learn a specific skill, but maybe the parent having the parents input on what's happening. In a particular part of a child's life would be really valuable or having a parent help a child learn a new skill, or having a parent? You know, follow up with the pediatrician, or go to the library to help find some resources, or whatever it might be. It's about involving the parent to sort of maximize the impact of the service on the child and on the family.

I know I'm kind of going on. The last thing I'll say about it is the diagnostic evaluation work that I do, which has been some of my most recent work. It's really about the goal that's a that's a different kind of relationship. That's more of a one time thing where a psychologist meets with a family to do an evaluation and then they give them the feedback, and then they're off. They don't have a relationship that's ongoing. Typically. And so the goal there of of my work is to help the psychologist really tailor how they talk to the family to help the family be as ready to hear whatever news there is, and take whatever action is recommended as possible. So there's a really wide range of types of interactions that I'm interested in and types of services that I'm interested in.

Michael Klitzing: 
Well, now, I want to ask you, what do you struggle with the most in studying your area?

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: 
So I think that one of the things that is the hardest for me, and especially with my focus on providers. And this is the same for families is is how maxed out everybody is, and how how hard it is to think about. I was just talking to someone this morning about this this idea of, you know, focusing on the process of interacting with a family of providing a service. This falls way below often some of the other higher level priorities like getting across the content that you need to get across, like filling, completing all the required paperwork for insurance, like, you know, if you have productivity requirements, making sure you meet those like all the other things that happen in your life that bring you to this moment, where you're interacting with this family, you bring all of that in. And so, focusing on the process of how can I make explicit what we're talking, what I'm what, how, what we're talking about, and how we can, and checking in to see if if they're if we're on the same page, if I'm understanding where they're at. You know those kinds of things, which is a lot of what I encourage providers to do. It could be really hard when you have so many other demands, and really hard to do consistently, I think another thing that can be challenging is ensuring that. Well, no, I'll say this. This is incredibly challenging, but is ensuring really ensuring that providers hear this as ways to help them do even better when they're already doing an amazing job. I think that when you do work with in supporting providers, and I would imagine the same is the case with teachers. That you you're gonna run the risk of the people you're trying to help hearing your efforts or perceiving your efforts. As you know, a commentary on what they're currently doing. And so I have to work really, really hard to on my messaging on the the relationships I build to to try and avoid that.

Michael Klitzing: 
Yeah, that's that's interesting. And one of the things I really love about all the research that happens in the college of education is how connected it is to the community, and I just wanted to get your perspective being connected to providers in the way that you are just. You know how much admiration do you have for the the work that they're out there doing every day?

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: Oh, an absolute. A indescribable amount, I mean. I think that being in the presence of families and working with them to try and solve problems, or address challenges or increase strengths. In the midst of this very hectic modern life that we live here in this beautiful part of the world. Is incredibly difficult to do, and there are. There is a shortage of providers. There is a shortage of financial support for these services. It's hard to feel, I think, supported by the broader systems. I would imagine that teachers again feel very much the same way, and to keep sort of getting up in the morning and and going to work or doing your work virtually, or whatever you may do is is truly heroic. So yeah, that's why I say, the last thing I would ever want is for a provider to come in contact with my work and think that there's any message that they're not doing good enough yet, cause they're doing great, and I just want to help them do that more consistently. Do that when they're having, you know, really hard day, or there's a family that they really don't connect with. See if they can find a way to still be present with them and try to partner with them. So yeah.

Michael Klitzing: 
Oh, that's great, and that's this is a perfect segue to our next question. This is usually the question that you end on but, I've I've got a a little more podcast chat to to go after that. But I wanna ask, you know, given your background as a clinical psychologist, you always ask people if if you could wave a magic wand and change, how providers and families work together, what would that look like?

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: I think that would look like what I just said, which is providers to the best of their ability to really be present to what family's individual experiences are, and for parents to have the best possible experience that they can have in services. Getting services for your child is not a fun thing. It's not like going to Disneyland or winning the lottery or something. It's stressful, it's hard. There's a lot of challenges to it. And I would just my hope would be that providers and parents can come together and have kind of the best possible experience that they that both sides could have.

Michael Klitzing: 
Yeah, thank you for that. So I wanted to to talk to you a little bit about this podcast thing we're doing here, too. We we just went through a whole season. Last semester we put out, or last academic year, I should say we put out I wanna say, it was 7, 6? Well, I wanna ask, what was that experience like for you? \Did this meet your expectations of what this podcast was gonna be?

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: 
It definitely, did. I think that I don't really have a sense of its impact beyond myself. I don't really track you know how many people are listening to it, or who's sharing it with each other. But I know for me, personally and professionally, it has been just wonderful to get to spend a few hours thinking about reading and talking to just a few of the amazing individuals that are in our college. I hope I get the opportunity to do it with everybody, because it's very hard in our busy lives to to really take that amount of time, to get to know what someone else is doing, even in my role as associate dean for research. It's hard to get to know someone's work, and someone as a professional well, and I'm not saying that that now I know these folks well, but I feel it just was been a really wonderful experience for me, and I also think that I hope that it's been a positive experience for the the people that I've interviewed. I hope that they have had a good experience sharing a little bit more personally about what they do and why they do what they do. I would love if it was something that you know they shared with others, and that helps them move their career forward. So those are kind of the main impacts that I guess I either have had. No, I've had on myself, or hope I'm having on others.

Michael Klitzing: 
Well, it's it's been a pleasure for me to produce, let me just say, I'm excited to move on with with Season 2 as that we're launching with this episode, and they're only gonna get better because the host is, gonna get better from from this point forward. 

Rachel Haine-Schlagel:
No, no, no, you did. Great. Not true at all. 

Michael Klitzing:
I appreciate that.

Rachel Haine-Schlagel:
But thank you, Mike, for those kind words. I appreciate it. 

Michael Klitzing:
Oh, of course, and thank you for being here and sharing your story today.

Rachel Haine-Schlagel: 
It was my pleasure.

 

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