Equity is part of all our work
This collection holds the equity toolkit, our equity webinar seasons, and resources on bias and on Tribal Nations. Culturally responsive consultation is competent consultation.
What's in this collection
Equity is a central component of infant and early childhood mental health consultation (IECMHC). Every individual who is part of the IECMHC system has an important role to play in promoting fair, positive, and equitable learning experiences for all children and families.
Program planning
Program Planning and Reflection Tool (PPRT): An entire domain is devoted to equity and covers: developing a program-wide strategic plan; staff training; service population & service delivery; reflective supervision; and data collection.
Online trainings and webinars
Equity in IECMHC Webinar Series (2023 to 2024): This series of webinars introduces a set of resources to support infant and early childhood mental health consultants and supervisors to strengthen cultural responsiveness in IECMHC for children and families in Tribal, African American, Latin American, and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities (AANHPI).
Toolkits and resource collections
IECMHC Racial Equity Toolkit: The CoE’s IECMHC Racial Equity Toolkit is a collection of videos, tools, and resources that can help consultation systems leaders and all IECMHC practitioners build capacity in understanding race and systemic racism, bias, and culturally responsive practice and meaningfully embed equity in their programs and practice.
Resource briefs
Promoting Black Joy and Countering Bias through Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation: This is a companion resource to the 2023 webinar, “Countering Bias and Promoting Black Joy in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation,” which is part of the CoE’s Equity in IECMHC Webinar series.
Assessments
Cultural and Linguistic Competence Self-Assessment Checklists: These tools are designed to assist managers and administrators in assessing the extent to which they demonstrate integration of cultural and linguistic competence into values, attitudes, communication styles, and the physical environment.
National reports and position statements
Diversity-Informed Tenets for Work with Infants, Children, and Families: The Diversity-Informed Tenets are guiding principles created to encourage the infant mental health field to intentionally and mindfully engage in standards of practice that promote and strive for a just and equitable society.
Working with Tribal communities and Nations
IECMHC Resources for Tribal Nations: This webpage provides a collection of resources to support programs, local governments and tribal nations in creating better services and systems for infants, toddlers and young children and their families through an Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation program.
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Webinars and events2022 CoE Conference: Infant Mental Health Endorsement in Virginia Webinars and events2022 CoE Conference: Leveraging Reflective Opportunities: Building Organizational Capacity for IECMH ConsultationJoin us for a discussion about how reflective moments can deepen and expand the work of early childhood mental health consultation. We will discuss how our agency brought consultation services into our own center-based and family childcare programs. We will also share how we found ways to deliver the right doses of reflection to build staff reflective capacity and increase access to both mental health consultation and psychotherapy. We will walk through ways we have successfully incorporated reflection into our programs and how these efforts have strengthened equity, staff self-regulation, and self-awareness, as well as interdisciplinary collaboration. Target audience: This presentation will be useful to program managers and administrators, and to clinicians delivering consultation services. Particularly relevant for people in the process of developing consultation programs and smaller agencies implementing consultation (i.e., not large state or county mental health agencies). Webinars and events2022 CoE Conference: Liberating our Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health CurriculumOur training institute of 6 IECMH professionals with diverse backgrounds has offered IECMH training to consultants and professionals in our community since 2013. It was constantly evolving, but in the last three years, it solidified into a predictable, structured, and manualized format. As the trainers/consultants deepened, their work around racial equity and Diversity Informed IMH Tenets as a team, and the growing need to revisit the training curriculum became apparent. Over the course of 2021, the team met regularly to break down and rebuild the content of the 11-session training. The newly revised curriculum is grounded in Theory (Attachment, S-E Development of Children 0-3, Pregnancy/Labor/Delivery, Impact of Trauma/Grief/Loss) and Practice (Noticing, Holding, Reflecting, Ways of Being, Ways of Doing) as well as Diversity Informed Tenets of IMH. Family culture is now at the center of how we understand, observe, and assess the caregiver/child relationship. Participants are invited to reflect on their own culture, biases, and ghosts in the nursery while engaging in our self-reflective, experiential, and discussion-based training on behalf of babies. Webinars and events2022 CoE Conference: Opening the Mystery Basket: Creativity and Reinvention in Early Childhood Mental Health ConsultationAs research on the importance of the first three years of life has expanded, policymakers and program designers have become aware of a major concern: the lack of professional development opportunities for infant-toddler educators. Early childhood mental health consultation is quickly growing as one possible solution to this problem and aims to increase access to professional knowledge and support across underserved communities. Using the metaphor of the hit Food Network program "Chopped," this storytelling presentation geared towards early childhood mental health consultants, home visitors, and supervisors will identify early childhood mental health consultation as a highly creative, inventive field of practice. The presenter will describe the premise of "Chopped," showcase some of its content, and then pose the question, “So what does this have to do with Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation?” In response, she will share her first-hand experience as a consultant partnering with family childcare programs and daycare centers in Brooklyn, New York. The short-term program the presenter was consulting with presented her with several tasks: build rapport with early care programs, assess areas of strength and those needing improvement, and partner with providers in order to increase their knowledge of early childhood mental health, all within a five-month time frame. In her practice, the presenter found that the key ingredients for successful consultation were creativity, reinvention, risk-taking, and resourcefulness. In this storytelling presentation, these qualities will be contextualized within the field of Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation and within "Chopped". Contestants on the show are presented with mystery baskets of challenging ingredients, many of which seem not to typically go together. Typically, the chef who achieves success is able to repurpose the ingredients, make use of the kitchen’s resources, and elicit reactions such as “I would have never thought to do it that way before.” Inevitably, consultants are charged with the same task: re-imagining what is in front of them. Webinars and events2022 CoE Conference: P1 Poster Presentation Recording Webinars and events2022 CoE Conference: Reflective Consultation: An Opportunity for Organizational WellnessReflective Supervision/Consultation (RSC) is a core tenet of work with young children and families, including IECMH Consultation. RSC holds incredible value for supporting direct services with young children and families, supporting a consultant’s experience of the work, increasing attention to equity in service delivery, and bolstering model fidelity. RSC also holds value for program directors and organizational leaders to slow down, consider organizational decisions that impact the delivery of IECMH Consultation, and promote the reflective practice as an embodied characteristic of organizational culture. This workshop will highlight current programs using RSC to support program and organizational leaders. The focus will be given to themes common to reflective spaces for leaders, similarities and differences with RSC provided to direct service staff, and equity as a central tenet for reflective work. Resources for organizational readiness assessments and reflective practice data collection will be shared. Participants will be invited to participate in discussion and reflection on opportunities to replicate RSC for organizational leaders within their respective programs/organizations. Brief5 Essential Elements of Effective Anti-Bias Professional Development for Mental Health Consultants GuideA Roadmap for Collaborative and Effective Evaluation in Tribal CommunitiesInformation on community-based participatory research specific to evaluations in tribal communities. Webinars and eventsAddressing equity across the early childhood systemAddressing equity across the early childhood system: How Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation is being implemented across a variety of early childhood settings. This panel session will feature leaders working across a variety of early childhood system settings including home visiting, early intervention, child welfare and primary care. They will describe how they have been able to work within these systems, foster collaboration and the challenges of providing consultation outside of the traditional early care and education settings. Addressing equity includes ensuring that services such as consultation are available to children, families and providers in all the settings in which families receive supports and services and panelists will engage in the challenges of doing this as well. Webinars and eventsAdvancing Anti bias Practices in IECMHC Through Reflective SupervisionIn this presentation participants will engage in an in-depth conversation about the ways that IECHMC can be a disrupter of bias, specifically through reflective supervision. First, participants will be provided with an understanding and definition of anti-bias consultation, followed by a brief overview of the Reflective Supervision for the Whole Job and the Whole Organization framework developed by the Reflective Supervision Collaborative (RSC). The framework is a whole-person, long-term learning approach informed by equity, diversity, and inclusion. Next, we will share voices from the field (consultants) on how reflective supervision helps deepen self-awareness of one’s bias and assumptions, with an emphasis on the core processes within the RSC framework. We will also share a few practical strategies that supervisors can use in their role as a disrupters of bias and how their role influence the parallel process between consultant and consultee. Lastly, participants will hear from an IECMHC provider’s efforts around commitment to and action towards disrupting bias. In addition to the above content, participants will watch a mock supervisor session on how consultants can have a conversation with teachers’ of color use of unsupportive emotional responses with Black boys. Webinars and eventsAdvancing Equity in Early Care for Families of Infants and Toddlers with Complex NeedsThe COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on children and families and has deepened disparities and inequities. Some families with young children have been left behind, cut off from essential developmental, educational, and health services. This session will highlight cross sector partnerships between IECMHC and community providers seeking to re-engage families with infants and toddlers with complex needs. Join us for stories about how the IECMHC role is helping guide new efforts to improve equity in early care in Ohio. Webinars and eventsAffirmed, Valued, Esteemed: AVEnue to Equity in ECE WorkforceThe well-being, equitable support, and retention of Early Childhood educators is in urgent need of intentionally focused attention, especially for educators who identify as Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC). Coming out of a global pandemic, many of these educators face unprecedented complexity in everyday life, both at work and at home. BIPOC educators are adversely impacted by numerous intersectionalities that can lead to confining states of personal and emotional distress. “Pervasive structural inequities across the early care and education workforce have been deepened by the pandemic, with Black, Hispanic, and Native American populations experiencing higher rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and morbidity (Mude et al., 2021). Job stress, burnout, and depressive symptoms are commonly reported by early educators and are associated with both diminished quality of learning environments and high job turnover.” (Johnson et al., 2020). The presenters strongly believe that providing personal development support such as Life Coaching, will positively impact outcomes not only for the educators, but for their students as well. Emotionally healthy educators who feel affirmed, valued, and esteemed, are capable of supporting the emotional/social development of young learners. They are also more likely to grow in their teaching practice as they experience greater job satisfaction and increased teacher effectiveness. This session will highlight overlooked issues and concerns that adversely impact many BIPOC early educators' mental and emotional well-being, and overall teaching performance. We will also explore the benefits of building an effective ECE workforce through system-wide changes that offer individualized personal and professional development, such as life coaching.