Activity: Is Your Program Ready for Consultation?

Activity: Is Your Program Ready for Consultation?

Print out and review of the items below, then check or circle the statements that you consider to be true for yourself and for your staff.

If any of these things are not true for either yourself or your program, you may want to address the issues in your strategic plan as pre-consultation activities designed to strengthen program readiness. (See also, “What Works: A Study of Effective Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Programs.”)

As a program director, are you:

  1. Prepared to provide staff time for partnership and consultation activities?
  2. Willing to engage in a reflective strategic planning process about how to best meet the mental health needs of families, children, and staff?
  3. Realistic about your expectations for consultation and what consultation can do?
  4. Able to adopt an improvement-oriented perspective, including collecting and reviewing data and continually making changes to your program to improve services?
  5. Willing to allow consultants regular time in the classrooms?
  6. Willing to provide time for staff and consultants to meet outside the classroom?
  7. Philosophically committed to including all children in classroom-based services?
  8. Committed to professional development of staff?
  9. Willing to reach out to community partners to expand and facilitate access to community mental health resources?
  10. Committed to supporting staff wellness

Do you feel your staff are:

  1. Willing to accept support from the mental health consultant?
  2. Willing to engage in a reflective strategic planning process about how to best meet the mental health needs of families, children, and staff?
  3. Realistic about their expectations for consultation and what consultation can do?
  4. Clear in their understanding about the role of the consultant?
  5. Open to partnering with the consultant to develop new/different ways to work with children and families?
  6. Willing to allow consultants regular time in their classrooms?
  7. Willing to take time to meet with consultants outside the classroom?
  8. Philosophically committed to including all children in classroom-based services?
  9. Committed to their own professional development?
  10. Willing to see supporting children’s mental health as part of their job?
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This product was developed [in part] under grant number 1H79SM082070-01 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The views, policies and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of SAMHSA or HHS.