Students Taking Candy from Strangers – Or Rather, Kooth Employees

As if Kooth wasn’t bad enough for Pennsylvania students, recent developments have shown the mental health platform in an even worse light. Late in February 2024, Wyoming Area School District (one of the first districts to sign up for Kooth) hosted an assembly presented by Kooth representatives. The following week, on February 27, 2024, parents at Wyoming Area School Board meeting claimed that Kooth representatives were enticing students to sign up for Kooth by handing out candy, cookies, and stickers (see minute mark 31:00). Students were even told by Kooth representatives that they did not have to tell their parents, according to angry parents at the board meeting. Kooth representatives had conveniently been invited to join the school board meeting.

Why would a school district allow this? They allowed representatives of a third party to come into school and give kids candy to entice them to do what they wanted. Not okay! Can the administration be trusted?

Why would Kooth do this? If you listen to the board meeting, Kooth representatives denied handing out candy to entice students, and said there was a technological issue due to too many logins, and that candy was later passed out in the classrooms for their inconvenience. The Kooth representative(s) were escorted by school employees from classroom to classroom. One parent asked how they anticipated such an issue and how they were prepared with that amount of candy (excellent catch!). Another parent pointed out that Kooth’s stocks were down over 60% over the last 6 months. Was Kooth incentivizing students to sign up and log in to inflate their statistics for investors?

Parents, it is time to reiterate to your children, no matter their age, that they should never accept candy from a stranger, even if that stranger is at school. We teach our children not to accept rides, even from parents they know, unless we give them permission. And here is an example of a school district going behind our backs to undo lessons that we as parents have instilled in them.

Representative Cabell, who is being challenged this primary by Jamie Walsh, finally took a stance on Kooth’s overreach at WASD and in the near future will be introducing legislation “that prohibits mental health services that contract with school districts from distributing prizes for signing up for a service.” Representative Cabell has also recently signed onto Representative Scialabba’s bills meant to reign in programs like Kooth. Previously, he had been supporting Kooth in schools. “What changed?” you might ask. I’ll tell you what has changed: Jamie Walsh has challenged Cabell’s stance on parental rights and his promotion of Kooth. In a recent debate between the two candidates, Jamie Walsh called out Representative Cabell for owning 8% as a shareholder in Elium Health and sitting on the board of directors. Elium Health is in the Greater Philadelphia Area and their website advertises “psychiatry + medication in-person & virtual appointments in Pennsylvania for ages 14+ appointments available within 48 hours.” No conflict of interest there, right? The truth is that Kooth could feed Cabell’s investment through referrals. With minor consent laws allowing children ages 14 and up to consent to mental health services, this company, like Kooth, can take advantage of impressionable teens who can consent to services without their parents’ knowledge. After Representative Cabell was called out at the debate, he asked for a mother to stop recording, despite the event being held in a public place. (First amendment rights generally allow for recording when the matter is of public interest and held in a public place.) If that wasn’t unflattering enough, Jamie Walsh also announcedthat Representative Cabell’s campaign manager attempted to bribe Jamie not to run this time around with a $10k check and instead run in 2026 for Senator Baker’s seat when she retires.

Since the debate, I’ve discovered that Representative Cabell also has 5.9% shareholder in CIVIQ, which appears to be an Addiction & Behavioral Health Center. As of November 2021, it also appears that they joined forces with Odyssey Behavioral Health. (Note the LGBTQIA+ flag at the bottom of both websites.)

If that isn’t interesting enough, remember from my previous article that we discovered Senator Baker’s son, Carson Baker, was lobbying for the DT Firm and lobbying specifically for Kooth? He has now been removed, as of February 15, 2024. Just days after Jamie’s debate with Representative Cabell, Elium Health discontinued their business with the DT Firm. Yes, Elium Health was using the same lobbying firm as Kooth. It appears that everyone is cleaning house now.

What’s Around the Corner for PA Students?

Recently, Representative Schlossberg (D) released a memo to pilot another program, this time a “school behavioral health screening pilot program”. The memo states:

“Our schools need the tools to help to identify children and teenagers who are struggling, and help those kids get the help they deserve – before it is too late. That’s why I will be introducing legislation establishing a pilot program to implement annual mental health screenings for students in grades six through twelve. Considering the success seen in similar programs across the country, this bill will require the Pennsylvania Department of Education to assess the needs of each school district and their progress in establishing the community health infrastructure necessary to screen their students. Finally, this legislation will direct grant funding to help districts bring on additional staff, expand their current programs, and work more closely with other community resources to accommodate the expected increase in students identified with mental health diagnoses.” 

On March 12, 2024, Senator Comitta (D) and Senator Rosemary Brown (R) released a similar memo but calling it “school mental health screening pilot program” and noting there would be a parental opt-out if desired.

This is where we are headed – mental health screenings for every Pennsylvanian student. We as parents need to be shouting from the rooftops that we do not want this! This program needs to be changed to an opt-in program, not an opt-out program. Opt-in programs allow for more parental permission and control, whereas opt-out programs are often set up with parents being unaware that they can opt out, or that the program is even happening.

Embedding Mental Health Centers in Schools

In January 2024, three House Education committee hearings were held by Representative Schweyer (D). (1-3) In these hearings, schools and mental health providers were pushing to discontinue the use of county behavioral health services in schools and allow schools to bring in “school based mental health centers”. They want a one-stop shop, purportedly for continuity of care, where parents cannot see what is happening.

Schools want to tap into federal tax dollars that they would receive from Medicaid. Every child with a plan of care (POC) would be billable to Medicaid and therefore, money that the school would receive. Can you imagine the money to be made? The more students who have a mental health diagnosis and a POC, the more money for school districts. This is a built-in incentive to have a high population of students with a mental health diagnosis!

In May 2023, the Biden Harris administration, through the Department of Education announced they would be proposing a new rule that would streamline services, especially mental health services. They proposed that school districts would no longer need to get parental consent to bill Medicaid. In the release above, they say how crucial it is to remove barriers so schools may easily provide Medicaid covered services. WHAT?! Parental consent is now considered a barrier to providing services? How can anyone ethically bypass informed consent? Who is consenting on behalf of a minor child? The school district, who has hired or contracted these providers? Or, is it the government?

Parents Question the System

According to this article in Education Week, “in a December 2022 AASA survey of administrators, 70 percent said there is a generalized concern among parents about signing any Medicaid consent or release form.” Parents expressed concerns “that their financial situations would become publicly known or there would be strings attached to the Medicaid billing.” So, this is the real barrier, too many parents questioning the system. As patients, when we walk into a medical facility for the first time and sometimes every time, we sign a financial agreement and a consent to treat. How is this any different?

As far as I can tell, removing parental consent to bill Medicaid in schools has not yet been implemented. For those who don’t have a special needs child, parents are asked for consent to bill Medicaid at IEP meetings. An IEP meeting is required to begin services and they are required yearly by law but may happen more frequently if requested. Will there be a push to eliminate IEP meetings? Where does this go from here? The clear trend is that the government is attempting to push parents out of the picture.

What might not be obvious at first is that school-based health centers and/or school-based mental health centers will not only provide mental health services, but they will also diagnose, treat for various conditions, and potentially even administer vaccines. The possibilities continue: they could prescribe SSRIs or anxiety medications, and parents would have no idea, thanks to our minor consent laws and the general consent form parents sign at the beginning of the school year. That mental health diagnosis could permanently stay on your child’s school record and medical record. Could this prevent your child from entering the military, getting certain jobs, or owning a gun? Could it prevent parents from owning guns if their child has a mental health diagnosis? I believe this is where we may be headed.

Since things have mostly returned to “normal” after COVID, many advocates have gone inactive. In fact, some freedom groups have disbanded. Many are not aware of the new and impending developments surrounding school-based clinics. We need citizen advocates to stay vigilant and to look to the future to realize the full implications of new programs.

Kooth is bound to disguise itself as something else. Maybe if their current model fails here, they will be the company to perform mental health screenings on PA students. Who knows! But the push is strong for school-based services. Companies like Effective School Solutions and Gaggle already exist. It is imperative as parents that we know what is going on in our school district. Currently, Pennsylvania School Based Health Alliance has 30 school-based health centers listed in Pennsylvania, mostly centralized in Philadelphia.

The NHS is now investigating Kooth for its “pro-trans” website just a week or so after the NHS in Englanddecided to make puberty blockers less available to minors due to the lack of scientific evidence. Some countries, such as Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands, are starting to realize the lack of scientific evidence for certain procedures, and understand the harm can happen when we allow experimental procedures on minors. However, here in America, it seems that quick fixes are enticing, and the system encourages doing “something” over finding root causes. As with anything else in healthcare, if they fixed the root cause, there would be little money to be made by Big pHARMa, by politicians who have conflicts of interest, by insurance companies, or healthcare systems. We must break free of this corrupt system!

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