Take Home Messages
- Promoting mental health for children, families, and staff has been an integral part of the Head Start Program since it began in 1965.
- Key influences on the design, integration, and delivery of mental health services have been influenced by:
- Head Start Program Requirements and Performance Standards (1998)
- An array of Head Start funded review, research, and publications
- New understanding emerging from the science of child development
- Training and technical assistance resources bringing research to practice
- A child can benefit most from a comprehensive, interdisciplinary program to foster development and remedy any developmental concerns.
- Parents are the primary educators of their children and must be directly involved in the program.
- The well-being of children is inextricably linked to the well-being of the entire family.
- Partnerships with other agencies and organizations in the community are essential to meeting family needs.
- Comprehensive
- Wellness
- Promotion, prevention, and early intervention
- Child-focused
- Family-centered
- Community-based
- Culturally responsive
- Defining early childhood mental health consultation
- Establishing the evidence base
- Determining what makes consultation effective
- Capacity building for delivering and evaluating consultation
- Fostering the social-emotional development of all young children in the program;
- Targeting specific factors that place young children at risk for developing behavior problems;
- Building the capacity of staff and families to implement evidence-based interventions to reduce challenging behavior;
- Promoting adoption of program-wide strategies that integrate evidence-based promotion, prevention and intervention approaches to young children’s social-emotional development; and
- Incorporating research-based approaches to addressing staff and family well-being as essential ingredients in young children’s healthy social and emotional development.
- Leadership that values and supports mental health, has a clear vision of mental health consultation, and guides the planning and implementation of mental health services.
- Finding a prepared (knowledge, skills, and qualities) and effective consultant with training and experience that matches the program’s philosophy, needs, interests, and requirements
- Orienting the consultant to the Head Start and Early Head Start philosophy, program requirements, and the unique features and culture of the program and the community in which it operates.
- Building working relationships that are trusting, respectful, and reflective among administrators, staff, caregivers, and families.
- Knowledge and utilization of evidence-based and effective practices and strategies to promote social emotional development, prevent and intervene Partnerships with community resources and a continuum of mental health services and supports Resources to evaluate and sustain services, including financial or other support
- A self-study guide for consultants
- Best practice tutorials for consultants
- Implementation toolkits for consultants to use with families and staff
- A management and sustainability guide for program administrators