The Differences are Between and Around

Someone once said, “When racism fell, we were all outside.” This quote speaks to challenges from “-isms” that plague society and influence each of us differently. What we cannot deny is that we are all influenced. Thankfully, there are many who refuse to tire in the fight for equity! Join us as we explore Bronfrenbrenner’s Ecological Model. We will look at this framework as a lens for understanding IECMH. We hope that this will eliminate the bias we have in our understanding of everyday interactions. Individuals who participate in this session will walk away with a new way to "question" what they are seeing and activate their wonderings.
Primary Focus Area: Equity
Resource Type: Online Trainings/Tutorials/Webinars

Going Deeper to Increase Self- Awareness and Culturally Responsive Services

The Jump Start Early Childhood Consultation Program is currently in its 5th year of implementation. It utilizes the Georgetown model and adapted it to the unique challenges, population and landscape of the Miami-Dade community. The goal of the program is to improve the capacity of childcare providers to address the social-emotional needs of young children in their care and, in turn, reduce the number of young children expelled from their centers. Empirical research demonstrates that children of color face disproportionate risks starting as early as preschool that can perpetuate a cycle of harmful long-term effects. For this reason, and the fact that the Miami-Dade community is very diverse, with non-Hispanic whites comprising only 11.5 % of the population (72.5 % Hispanic, 16% African American, Haitians and other groups), an important goal of the Jump Start Program is to embed equity, inclusion and cultural humility into all aspects of the work. The large Jump Start team includes 27 consultants who are culturally and linguistically representative of the population they serve. From the start increasing consultants’ awareness and ability to promote social and racial equity was a priority. Initially, didactic trainings from national experts were provided. However, it became apparent that in order to make a real impact - work needed to be done at a deeper level. For the past 9 months, our team has partnered with the Indigo Cultural Center, having monthly dialogues around these important topics. Dr. Shivers and Ms. Johnston lead these monthly groups with Jump Start Supervisors and Equity Champions. The Champions, in turn, lead monthly groups with the rest of the consultants. In this presentation, the Jump Start Program’s model to increase staff’s awareness and ability to provide culturally responsive services will be discussed, including the process of selecting equity champions, their roles, and the parallel process as far as the impact this work has on teachers and children. The target audience for this presentation is all IECMH consultants and supervisors. It is our hope that this model can be replicated to propagate equity and inclusion across childcare centers and other early childhood programs.
Primary Focus Area: Equity
Resource Type: Online Trainings/Tutorials/Webinars

Hand in Hand’s Parenting and Teaching for Social Justice A Model Learning Collaborative

Please join us for an experiential session where you will have the opportunity to try out a unique self-reflective practice tool that you can bring to your work with peers and mentors. We will also share our experience designing and leading an innovative equity-focused professional development curriculum: Hand in Hand Parenting’s Parenting and Teaching for Social Justice Learning Collaborative in which participants use this self-reflective practice tool to focus specifically on healing from the impact of systemic oppression. Hand in Hand’s Learning Collaborative was organized to support our 250+ Certified Instructors who work with parents and early care and education professionals. The Learning Collaborative is focused on changing our own attitudes and tackling the emotional hurdles we face while working for justice. We work to heal from internalized oppression, so we can continue to reclaim confidence and power and enjoy our children and advocate for them, and we work to undo attitudes that fuel oppressive systems, so we can take intentional action and support the leadership of those who have been marginalized. Early Childhood Mental Health Consultants and others working with parents and early care and education professionals (Home Visitors, Head Start/Early Head Start educators, and Early Intervention providers) may be especially interested in this session.
Primary Focus Area: Equity
Resource Type: Online Trainings/Tutorials/Webinars

Tracing three parallel histories of IECMHC in SF and their impact on equity today

San Francisco’s IECMHC (SF-ECMHC) Initiative is recognized for its grounding in cultural practice and cultural communities and for holding lasting consultation relationships. We present data for how equity from the start of an initiative can impact the development of a diverse IECMHC workforce. We illustrate the initiative’s maintained dedication to cultural communities by employing consultants who mirror those communities and share the impact of consultant-consultee match on IECMHC outcomes. We acknowledge the ‘Sankofa Effect’ – looking back to move forward. We look back on the distinct, parallel histories of the SF-ECMHC Initiative, which are deeply connected to equity and cultural communities. We highlight the history of Instituto Familiar de la Raza’s (Instituto) and the establishment of the Proveedora Program in 1986 to meet the needs of the Chicano/Latino community, many of whom experienced traumas from immigrating amid Central America’s civil war and were not accustomed to child care provided by "strangers." Finally, we provide conceptualizations for why the consultant-consultee match cultivates stronger and more impactful consultation, highlighting concepts like power, lived experience, and collectivism.
Primary Focus Area: Equity
Resource Type: Online Trainings/Tutorials/Webinars

IECMHC 101

With the current growth in the practice of this kind of IECMH Consultation, it is important to keep fidelity. This session will provide introductory key points and resources about what is needed to provide effective IECMH Consultation services. Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation is a growing field with mounting evidence that this practice supports meeting caregivers 'where they are,' in settings and in their work places. Consultants meet caregivers 'where they are,' so that the caregivers can better support young children's (and their families') emotional and social development. IECMHC primarily started out in Early Childhood Education (ECE) classrooms, and is now slowing making its way into other service settings that have a touch in young children's lives (prenatal to 5 yrs. old), like pediatric clinics, home visiting programs, child welfare services, home-based child care, and many other settings.
Primary Focus Area: Messaging/Making the Case for IECMHC
Resource Type: Online Trainings/Tutorials/Webinars

Unlocking Our Implicit Biases Regarding Parenting Practices to Deepen Relations With Families

Explore parenting practices from cultures worldwide and which of these practices triggers implicit biases. Develop a deeper understanding of the “why” behind various parenting practices and the diverse families entering your program. Learn strategies to build relationships with families while embracing cultural differences and helping families better understand your program. All too often, implicit bias is at the root of issues for Black and Brown children and their families. The immediate assumptions that are made regarding intelligence or ability simply from initial impressions have a far-reaching negative reach. As we have seen in higher maternal death rates for Black and Brown women and higher rates of expulsions/ special education referrals for Black and Brown boys, the White professionals working with a BIPOC population are still needing additional education surrounding their ability to identify their own implicit biases in order to ensure these biases do not play a role in their work. In this presentation, I challenge participants to examine their implicit biases surrounding parenting practices. When educators, especially caregivers working with very young children, bring in their set of beliefs as the “right” way to do something, it results in negating the cultural preferences or beliefs of the family they are working with. My goal is to have participants see color, see the unique differences between families’ parenting practices, and value these practices, especially when they differ from what the participants believe. I want participants to leave this session with a greater understanding and respect for parenting practices that are widely accepted in other social settings so that participants can better understand and guide conversations with families from a different culture in the future. Ultimately, this partnership based on understanding and acceptance will lead to the best understanding of what the child needs in order to reach their full potential.
Primary Focus Area: Family Engagement
Resource Type: Online Trainings/Tutorials/Webinars

“You are my other me”

In their workshop, “You Are My Other Me," First-Generation and BIPOC-affirming practitioners Sunny Cho and Jenny Lopez delve into the transformative power of Reflective Consultation Groups in the realm of Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation. By intertwining their personal stories, both will share on the inception, design, implementation, and evaluation of virtual Reflective Consultation Groups offered across early education centers throughout California, since the inception of the COVID-19 global pandemic to present. Both will reflect openly on the evolution of Reflective Consultation Groups, paralleling their own growth stories - now focusing on creating a supportive community for early education professionals, as well as offering emotional respite and fostering brave dialogues around collective grief and loss, racial trauma, and systematic oppression. Sunny and Jenny aim to inspire fellow consultants to embrace Reflective Group Consultation as a tool for both personal and collective growth, and helpful in promoting a culture of wellness among early childhood education communities. This workshop will emphasize the importance of co-facilitation in Reflective Consultation Groups as a deliberate practice to enhance workforce development and long-term sustainability.
Primary Focus Area: Reflective Supervision
Resource Type: Online Trainings/Tutorials/Webinars

Using Qualitative Data to Elevate Stakeholder Voices in Virginia’s ECMHC Pilot

This workshop presentation explores the transformative potential of qualitative research and evaluation in promoting equity within the context of early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC). Often when programs and services are designed, they do not draw on lived experiences of the communities they serve which continues to promote deficit ideas about children, families, and their communities, particularly for children and families of color (O'Cathain et al., 2019). This workshop will show how qualitative research can strengthen programs and services by incorporating the voices of the communities that they are designed for. VDOE allocated federal relief dollars to fund an ECMHC pilot in early care and education (ECE) classrooms during the 2022-2023 school year in Virginia with three key objectives. The pilot was to aid ECE teachers in supporting children’s social-emotional needs in response to COVID-19, prevent suspensions and expulsions, and explore the feasibility of expanding the pilot to an eventual statewide ECMHC model (Partee et al, 2023). To understand implementation of the Virginia ECMHC pilot, we collected data using both qualitative and quantitative methods. In this presentation we will share findings and experiences from the qualitative strand of the study, specifically focusing on the insights gathered through video-cued focus groups and interviews with teachers, program directors, and families of children who received ECMHC services.
Primary Focus Area: Evaluation Design
Resource Type: Online Trainings/Tutorials/Webinars

Building a theory-driven evaluation of IECMHC: CoE Tips and Tools

This workshop presentation will feature research and evaluation resources from the Center of Excellence for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (CoE for IECMHC), covering topics such as writing an IECMHC evaluation plan and measuring IECMHC. The workshop will demonstrate how a theory-driven evaluation can enhance the existing evidence base and help formulate future research and evaluation questions.
Primary Focus Area: Evaluation Design
Resource Type: Online Trainings/Tutorials/Webinars

Supporting Teachers in Building Relationships with Families and Caregivers

In this presentation, we will briefly cover topics such as attachment, mental health, and stressors that could impact the ability to form and maintain relationships. We will then model how to create a 'relationship building' toolbox using concepts from infant mental health and clinical social work. Finally, we will end with a case vignette and small breakout group discussions using the relationship building tools.
Primary Focus Area: Family Engagement
Resource Type: Assessment/Observation/Outcome Measures