The Community Health Center Inc. (CHC) will launch the Early Childhood Therapeutic Partnership (ECTP) project to expand and enhance existing mental health services for thousands of infants and children in underserved communities primarily in Lower Fairfield County while strengthening the clinical expertise of pediatric service providers nationally.
Through CHC’s specialized pediatric mental health arm, the Child Guidance Center of Southern CT (CGC), the ECTP project will serve between 660-1350 children annually and over 4,100 in the first five years. Children served will be aged birth through 12 and primarily from BIPOC families in Lower Fairfield County, CT. They will receive an array of prevention, assessment, and intervention services to support their social emotional development and mental health. The direct service components of the ECTP project will include individual, group and family therapy, parent guidance, evidenced-based trauma treatments including Attachment, Self-Regulation and Competency (ARC), Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), and Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), and psychiatric medication management services. Establishing a designated multi-disciplinary clinical assessment team to conduct comprehensive developmental evaluations (CDE) will shorten the 1-1.5 year current average wait time for CT families. Expanding an existing partnership between CGC and the Children’s Learning Center of Fairfield County (CLC) will increase access to mental health consultation (IECMHC) in state-subsidized preschools in Stamford CT. These direct service components of the ECTP project would become self-sustaining through fees for service.
The education component of the ECTP project will strengthen the clinical expertise of the pediatric workforce serving vulnerable communities by training between 4-67 pediatric providers annually and a total of 182 providers nationally in the first five years. Through Learning Collaboratives, CHC’s learning management system, and Project ECHOs (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), the ECTP project will bring CHC’s infant and early childhood mental health expertise to pediatric service providers across the country. CHC’s research, education, and policy arm, the Weitzman Institute, will lead these training components.
The primary goals and measurable objectives of the ECTP project are:
1. Increase capacity, quality, and timely access to infant and early childhood assessment and intervention services by a) training additional clinicians to conduct CDEs, b) training at least 60 clinicians in CT in ARC, and c) training early pediatric mental health providers and educators from at least 8 communities nationally to develop, implement, and sustain preschool mental health assessment, intervention, and consultation services.
2. Increase CLC’s capacity to manage emotional/behavioral outbursts of young children so that a) 90% of CLC’s students will be in classrooms led by teachers with 1 year of Mirror IEMHC training, b) CLC will demonstrate a 50% decrease in behavioral incident reports and a 50% decrease in student expulsions, and c) evaluation of the Mirror Program will generate 1 manuscript published in a peer reviewed journal.
3. Individuals who receive ECTP mental health intervention services will experience increased functioning and decreased distress as demonstrated each year by a) 70% of children showing significant improvement on performance measures assessing changes in social-emotional functioning and behavior and b) 70% caregivers showing significant improvement on performance measures assessing parental stress.