Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation | Supervision | Montgomery | Texas | Colorado

Are you struggling with challenging behaviors, or just want to strengthen your social-emotional learning, in your early learning classroom or child care center? Contact me today to provide trainings or consultation to support your staff and families.

Infant & Early childhood mental health consultation (I/ECMHC) is emerging an as evidence-based intervention for supporting young children’s social/emotional development and addressing challenging behaviors. It includes the following:

A problem-solving and capacity-building intervention implemented within a collaborative relationship between a professional consultant with mental health expertise and one or more caregivers, typically an early care and education provider and/or family member. Early childhood mental health consultation aims to build the capacity (improve the ability) of staff, families, programs, and systems to prevent, identify, treat and reduce the impact of mental health problems among children from birth to age 6 and their families. (Adapted from Cohen & Kaufmann, 2000)

Outcomes associated with I/ECHMHC

Child and family outcomes associated with I/ECMHC:

• Reduced preschool suspensions and expulsions

• Decreased problem behaviors, especially externalizing behaviors

• Increased gains on socialization, emotional competence, and communication

• Improved social skills and peer relationships

• Reduced missed work days for parents

Staff outcomes associated with I/ECMHC:

• Demonstrated improvements in teaching feelings and managing children’s behavior

• Engaged families in home visiting

• Improved staff interactions with children

• Increased the frequency of home visits with families

• Improved CLASS scores

• Improved home visiting retention

Program level outcomes associated with I/ECMHC:

• Increased in supportive policies and reflective supervision

• Reduced staff feelings of stress and burnout

• Reduced staff turnover

• Improved children’s’ attachment/resilience

• Improved children’s school readiness

Systems level outcomes associated with I/ECMHC:

• Increased in ongoing developmental screening with referral and follow-up

• Mental health problems identified earlier

• Specialty services such as early intervention or mental health services referred more appropriately.