Areas of Expertise - Early Childhood Mental Health
Research demonstrates that social emotional development begins in infancy and is directly linked to school readiness. Preschoolers’ emotional development is parallel to early literacy development. Child care and early education providers play a critical role in promoting social and emotional development and have the opportunity to support parents in the process. Teacher training, classroom support, and individualized interventions are needed to provide stability for young children in early education and care programs so that learning can continue.
Recognizing the importance of early childhood mental health, Early Childhood Associates, Inc. has published the acclaimed Children’s Support Services manual, and offers training on supporting young children’s social/emotional development in the classroom as well as specialized mentor-coaching services.
Children’s Support Services
The Children’s Support Services manual describes a specific mental health system of care that targets young children, ages 2 to 6, who exhibit challenging behavior and who are at risk of being terminated from early education and care programming because they present safety issues for themselves or their peers.
Practically speaking, Children’s Support Services provides case management and individualized support services to children, increases families’ access to community resources and state agency services, and provides behavior consultation and training to parents and early education and care staff to enhance their capacity to care for and educate young children. By strengthening existing collaborations and forming new strategic alliances among agencies and individuals that serve young children and their families, Children’s Support Services has been successful in eliminating the expulsion and suspension of children from child care programs.
The Children’s Support Services program+ has been recognized as an exemplary model by the U.S. Department of Education, the Association for Childhood Education, Brown University, the Children’s Defense Fund, and the Massachusetts Department of Education.
Specialized Mentor-Coaching
Effectively addressing social and emotional development requires a system of education and care that weaves together evidence-based practices, professional competence, leadership strategies, and collaborative planning. Mentor-coaching uses these characteristics to create communities in which providers and supervisors share a common vision and language of teaching and learning – building new habits of communication that can focus on practice.
The principles behind the mentor-coaching approach support these evidence-based practices and Early Childhood Associates, Inc.’s Mentor-Coach training links professional development with content specializing in early childhood mental health, social emotional development, and challenging behaviors.
