CDC Children’s Mental Health Champions

The overarching goal of this project is to create a space to amplify the voice of family-led mental health (MH) organization leaders to partner with the Virginia Departments of Education and Health on supporting access to existing, new, accurate, and simplified MH, self-harm and suicide resources for families of middle and high school children with social, emotional, and MH needs.  This project includes a focus on the intersectionality of MH conditions with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Resources will be distributed to MH family-led organizations through ongoing partnerships.  One particular partnership is with the Family Engagement Network which is comprised of representatives from higher education, K-12 education agencies, family-led organizations, and state agency representatives with the main goal of building blueprints for family engagement. A video will be created showing clips of interviews with young people with IDD/MH dual diagnosis sharing their lived experience which will be distributed via social media and with partners. Tools from the Virginia Commonwealth University related to partnerships for people with disabilities and the Center for Family Involvement provide additional information.  

The overarching goal of this project is to develop a plan with key stakeholders to disseminate materials in Nebraska and the surrounding region. Training, consultation, and technical assistance to regional primary care providers (nurses, physicians, social workers, behavioral health, and psychiatry) will be made available in-person, virtually, or recorded on demand.  A 7- part series of training modules centered on building knowledge and capacity to address infant and early childhood mental health (MH) can be completed as a series or customized to meet primary care providers’ needs. Modules include Infant MH in Primary Care Settings, Child Development, Surveillance and Screening, Strengthening Parent Child Relationships, Adverse Childhood Experiences and Trauma, Addressing Common MH and Developmental Concerns in Primary Care, Medical Trauma and Pain Management in Infants and Early Childhood, and Creating a Network of Care. The Module on Surveillance and Screening will be further enhanced to include 1) supplemental slides on evidence-based evaluations for autism spectrum disorders, and 2) training, technical assistance, and a toolkit of handouts on evaluation and the use of new EarliPoint technology for providers, educators, and caregivers. This Module will be delivered to the Resident Training Program at University of Nebraska Medical Center as part of a comprehensive autism spectrum disorder evaluation process.

The overarching goal of this project is to bridge the gap between education, health care, and community related to childhood mental health (MH) across the state of South Dakota. This project provides digestible, accurate, and actionable information about MH (specifically developmental disabilities, ADHD, and autism) to those interacting with children. This initiative facilitates better understanding, supports early identification, implements evidence-based intervention, and increases awareness related to the impact of MH. Strong existing partnerships will be leveraged with partners in health care, education, human service, and community-based organizations including the Departments of Education, Health, Social Services, and Human Services.  Established relationships with the nine tribal communities in the state through the Oyáte Circle, a sub-center of the USD Center for Disabilities allows the project to focus on the needs of tribal members and their families.  An important part of this work is to include individuals with MH disorders and their families ensuring their voices are integral in all aspects of this project. Virtual and in-person trainings will be offered to students, professionals, community members, self-advocates, and families. A new activity for this year after completing a needs assessment is to provide an ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) to reach underserved rural, frontier, and tribal communities.

At the most general level, this project focuses on increasing access to and feasibility of evidence-based behavioral interventions for ADHD with a particular focus on parent management training. The overarching goal of this project is to work in partnership with families and providers associated with an urban primary care practice in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia care network to pilot a revised version of the Bootcamp for ADHD (BC-ADHD) program—now renamed GetReady—which will be accessible to low-income, Black families.  The BC-ADHD (GetReady) program was developed to encourage initiation of evidence-based treatment at the time of first diagnosis. By embedding this program in primary care, the goal is to avoid delays in initiating treatment due to waitlists for behavioral health services. The Get Ready program is offered in multiple modalities including in-person, virtual, and hybrid.  A major focus of GetReady is to prepare parents to work collaboratively with their child’s school and primary care provider to initiate and sustain interventions and medication. In the implementation phase, barriers to these collaborations will be identified and ways to help families create partnerships more effectively will be explored. Materials to support this multimodal implementation effort will be developed including website and virtual resources.

The overarching goal of this project is to develop a model of early childhood mental health (MH) crisis response that can be shared with early learning and K-12 settings. The model will be built in collaboration with early learning centers, local educational agencies (LEAs), and regional leaders. The project aims to increase the coordination and partnerships across children’s MH systems (e.g., Head Start & K-12) and provide guidance for early learning centers to build and sustain a model of crisis response in partnership with their LEA resulting in the creation of linkages across those two systems. This guidance will be disseminated to early learning settings and LEAs with the goal of 70 early childhood MH leaders and LEA MH specialists to receive the guidance.

The overarching goal of this project is to recognize the Power of Hope and Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) to demonstrate what is going well for families and to move the discussion from acknowledging there is a problem to focusing on solutions.  There are two pilots in the state gathering data on positive variables which are the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) and the Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences (HOPE) Framework. Data on family strengths/hope from these two existing pilots combined with data on infant/toddler mental health (MH) will be utilized to deliver three webinars focused on PCEs and hope. Another focus of this project is to obtain the unrepresented family voice when they experience MH challenges in early childhood.  Interviews will be conducted with 10-20 families who have experienced preschool suspension and/or expulsion; this qualitative data will supplement the existing quantitative data. This information will aid in understanding the problem and support advocacy work to humanize the issue for legislators and others who do not work directly with families. The final focus for this project is to address the need to network across systems.  Four webinars will be provided to focus on infant/early childhood MH initiatives that may not have “crossed silos” of professionals from home visiting programs, MH and addictions, early intervention, and community/neighborhood supports. 

The overarching goal of this project is to discover the challenges (emotional, behavioral, and basic concrete support needs) and raise awareness in the homeless provider and behavioral health treatment communities of the needs of young children and their caregivers when they are experiencing homelessness. A network of connections with many New Hampshire entities (family resource centers, community health workers, providers, infant mental health (MH) and community MH providers) already exists and this network will be used to foster awareness and advocacy around this issue. Guidance and buy-in will be obtained and these connections with key collaborators will allow discussions of project goals and a forum for partners to share what works. A set of competencies, materials, and a video highlighting the experiences of caregivers with young children who have experienced homelessness will be developed along with content for an online learning portal. Unhoused youth and young adults with young children will have their stories, concerns, attempts to obtain behavioral health services, and dreams for their children captured in a video. The video and the learning community will be used to raise awareness about the impact of housing insecurity on young children, their caregiver’s capacity to support them, and the importance of addressing the specific social, emotional, and behavioral health needs of these families and their children.  

The overarching goal of this project is to utilize the Incredible Years evidence-based practice model to address high levels of social, emotional, and behavioral dysregulation in young children, particularly those from underserved communities.  The plan is to expand the capacity of current community and state work to implement the Incredible Years program in areas outside of mental health settings, such as schools and Regional Centers. A presentation will be developed on effective implementation of the Incredible Years, emphasizing strategies that go beyond training clinicians, which will be utilized to recruit school and Regional Center partners. Another goal is to address long-term sustainability by deepening the implementation of the program so the effectiveness of it is maximized and there are experienced champions of the program who can act as stewards. A second overarching goal is to disseminate the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA) Safe Surrender Clinic model, an interdisciplinary screening model for children with unknown prenatal and family histories, which is used to link families to early childhood preventative care services.  While specifically targeting infants relinquished via Safe Haven laws, principles of this can also be applied to other infants in foster care who also have gaps in their family histories and records.  Relationships will be leveraged to share the CHLA Clinic Model with state and national partners and by presenting at a relevant conference.  

The overarching goal of this project is to increase collective knowledge of the intersection of children’s mental health (MH) and autism for child-serving entities in Tennessee through the dissemination of accessible, research-based information.  This will be accomplished by strengthening existing and creating new family-school-healthcare-community partnerships with key statewide and regional organizations across the MH and disability sectors. School and community-based providers will be trained in both identifying autism and co-occurring MH concerns and implementing evidence-based interventions for this population. Using a variety of data sources, needed resources will be identified and training topics related to the early identification of children’s MH concerns, autism, and other developmental disabilities will occur.  

The overarching goal of this project is to focus on gathering information from the field to inform the alignment of school-age Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and early childhood Pyramid Model within a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework. MTSS is a whole-school, data-driven, prevention-based framework for improving learning outcomes for EVERY student, including outcomes related to the social, emotional, behavioral, mental health, and overall well-being of Vermont’s students. Early childhood site directors, the Early MTSS team at the Vermont Agency of Education, and early childhood teachers and kindergarten teachers from schools implementing PBIS, will be critical partners in aligning Pyramid Model and PBIS. To ensure alignment and gather information from the field, a survey will be developed and distributed to early childhood teachers and directors and kindergarten teachers working in schools implementing PBIS to assess their understanding of the Pyramid Model and PBIS. Key informant interviews will be conducted to expand upon information obtained from the survey. Information collected will inform the development of a microlearning module and professional development opportunities. 

The overarching goal of this project is to work with Community Health Centers (FQHC) to develop a visual media campaign on social emotional development for young children. Monthly calls with FQHC staff will be held to update them on progress and outcomes. Content will be shared with FQHC across the state and with AAP and CDC for dissemination. The resources and short video clips will support the mental health needs of young children, provide resources to be used at FQHC well child visits and can be accessed via the web or social media. Resources will be distributed statewide to schools and stakeholder agencies and disseminated through stakeholder websites in CT. Regional trainings will be provided on the use of the resources.