Los Angeles Unified Brings Student Mental Health Into the 21st Century (03-04-25)

Los Angeles Unified Brings Student Mental Health Into the 21st Century

Los Angeles Unified families can now access mental health services directly from home, drastically breaking barriers to mental health care.

Los Angeles, CA (Feb. 4, 2025) – Los Angeles Unified has reached a significant milestone in its telehealth programs, now allowing parents and guardians to easily request and access mental health services for their children from the comfort of home. Families can access these essential services by visiting a public-facing website or using the District’s family-focused Parent Portal. This expansion enhances accessibility for families, making it simpler than ever to connect students with mental health support when and where they need it.

“We continue to be in a youth mental health crisis,” Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said. “Our students are faced with challenges in the world like we’ve never seen, with unprecedented rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. Addressing these programs urgently and effectively is a critical part of our mission as a district, ensuring every child is healthy, ready to learn, and succeed in the world.”

As part of the 2022-26 Strategic Plan, Los Angeles Unified called for prioritizing telehealth programs, allowing students to connect to health care professionals through video conferencing technology. The district began offering telehealth services to its schools in the fall 2023.

“The key to high quality mental health support is to provide the care to our youth when they need it, which is often right away,” Chief Medical Director Dr. Smita Malhotra said. “If a student gets a cut or sprains an ankle, we don’t hesitate to get that student necessary care. We want to treat mental health the same way, ensuring students have direct and immediate access to care. Telehealth enables us to do that.”

Officials indicate that an essential part of providing telehealth is parent and family involvement in care, which can be time consuming given families’ mobility, busy work schedules, and even language barriers. By allowing families to request through their smartphones or other devices, they are able to connect to program staff from wherever they are at times when it's convenient.

Launched about a decade ago, the Parent Portal serves as a “a one-stop web and App portal that provides parents and legal guardians essential real-time information to help them support their child,” according to official documents. For several years, parents have been able to use the tool to monitor their child’s attendance, grades, emergency contacts, calendars and events, and a host of other items. The recent upgrade is a first step in allowing parents to be involved in school-based health care for their child as well.

The District’s Medical Services Division will support schools with tools and information to help them interact with their families and school communities around telehealth and its connection to the Parent Portal app.

For the most up-to-date information, please follow Los Angeles Unified on Twitter/X at @laschools and @lausdsup, Instagram at @laschools and @lausdsup, Facebook at @laschools and @AlbertoMCarvalho1, and Bluesky at @laschools.bsky.social and @lausdsup.bsky.social.