New England Regional Behavioral Health Toolkit

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Thank you for your interest in the New England Regional Behavioral Health Toolkit!

With the increasing amount of pediatric behavioral health conditions presenting to emergency departments with increasing lengths of stay in the ED, our goal is to provide a toolkit to help assist with the care of pediatric patients who present for a behavioral health complaint and are awaiting placement or further evaluation.

We are excited to present three resources - the Activities Resource Packet, the Behavioral Health Training video series and the Comprehensive Care Bundle - which can be found in the menu to the right!

  • The Activities Resource Packet contains a no cost self-care activities binder for patients and caregivers. This binder includes several coping exercises including breathing, relaxing, mindfulness, and gratitude practices. The activities are self-guided and can be done at any time.
  • The Behavioral Health Training video series contains a series of videos covering topics including introduction to pediatric behavioral health conditions, coping and common triggers, psychiatric medications and more.
  • The Comprehensive Care Bundle contains a variety of tools to help enhance patient safety and staff communication for children with behavioral health symptoms that are boarding in your emergency department awaiting psychiatric care/disposition.

Toolkit Components were chosen based on a regional needs assessment about needed ED resources for this population, done by collaborative and follow-up survey of New England ED Pediatric Emergency Care Coordinators (PECC's) ranking their top choices for resources. The New England EMSC Regional Collaborative (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT) have worked with local experts to create this resource.

Additionally, the link below will take you directly to an agitation toolkit from the EMSC Innovation and Improvement Center. The Pediatric Education and Advocacy Kit (PEAK) on Agitation includes a practice guideline for agitated pediatric patient, medication dosing table, de-escalation tips and educational modules, webinars and podcasts.

Pediatric Education and Advocacy Kit (PEAK): Agitation - Search • EIIC (emscimprovement.center)

If you have any questions, you can send an email to nepecc@enders.tch.harvard.edu.