Our work to address the children’s mental health crisis

Right now, we are in the midst of a mental health crisis that is affecting even our youngest children. Made worse by the pandemic, long delayed or absent mental health services have resulted in an urgent need for mental health supports in early childhood education (ECE) settings. Ask any ECE provider and they will tell you that improved access to mental health services is critical to their ability to provide high-quality care to the children and families who rely on them.

Studies show that young children are capable of experiencing the emotional highs of happiness and elation, as well as the challenges of anxiety, grief, and anger. When toxic stress in our youngest children is not met with supportive environments, it can impact the architecture of a child’s brain. Despite this, there has been little public investment in ensuring that ECE providers feel well-equipped to deliver trauma-informed care that can meet the needs of children processing stress and trauma.

While the K-12 system has mental health supports built into its very funding model,      programs serving children ages 0-5 are often left on their own to source and pay for mental health supports and to navigate an under-resourced and complicated system. This lack of public funding is straining already understaffed child care programs, where teachers feel that they don’t have enough people, training, or resources to adequately meet the needs of the children and families they serve.

That’s why here at Neighborhood Villages, we’ve prioritized creating an innovative, scalable model for how centralized and multi-layered mental health supports can be delivered in ECE settings in Massachusetts.

In partnership with early childhood mental health experts, early education providers, educators, families, and our partners at the Brazelton Touchpoints Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, we’ve articulated a Multi-Tiered System of Support for Early Childhood. This system, similar to the ones used by K-12 school systems across the country, identifies resources that can and should be available to students in ECE classrooms.

Multi-Tiered System of Support for Early Childhood

This Multi-Tiered system of Support for Early Childhood models how the ECE system could provide universal preventative supports for all young children in ECE programs, while ensuring that children experiencing more acute challenges receive mental health services in the environment most appropriate for their needs.

We are setting out to design, pilot, and test this model in The Neighborhood. Our goal is to show how we can increase access to the supports ECE providers require to meet the unprecedented needs of the children and families that rely on them.

And the results are already promising. For example, educators involved in early stages of the pilot have reported that having access to an early childhood mental health consultant has had a positive impact on staff, families, and children. They report being able to better support and engage families in mental health services, understand family and child trauma, and be more reflective in their daily practices.

Our work to show that we can integrate these supports seamlessly into child care settings is just beginning!  Our model stands to represent a fundamentally new approach to addressing the early childhood mental health crisis in Massachusetts and nationally.