Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation: Opening the black box of consultation activities and consultation content

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Prevention and Interventions

Abstract

Introduction: Early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) aims to promote young children’s mental health and social-emotional learning by enhancing the quality of the early care and education environment (Perry et al., 2010). A consultant with mental health expertise partners with administrators, teachers, and families to build their capacity to support young children’s social, emotional, and behavioral development. Prior research and evaluation efforts focused on whether receipt of ECMHC relates to positive outcomes (e.g., Gilliam et al., 2016). To date, limited research has examined the content of ECMHC including consultation activities (e.g., observations, teacher meetings) and the content of consultation meetings (e.g., classroom routines, behavior management strategies). This has left the ECMHC intervention as a black box with only speculation as to the active ingredients. Given the expansion of ECMHC nationwide and implementation of multiple varied models, it is critical to understand the active ingredients that contribute to positive outcomes for young children. This study aims to examine ECMHC intervention activities and content to understand how variations in activities and content relates to outcomes in the classroom environment during the course of one school year.
Methods: The Georgetown ECMHC model (Hunter et al., 2016) was implemented in 19 classrooms across 5 public charter preschools in a large mid-Atlantic city. Consultants observed classroom mental health climate (Preschool Mental Health Climate Scale; Gilliam, 2008) and social-emotional teaching practices (reference blinded) at the beginning and end of the school year. Consultants also tracked the time spent in various consultation activities as well as the content focus of their consultation meetings with teachers (multiple content options could be selected for one meeting) using a daily dashboard. Descriptive statistics for consultation activities and consultation meeting content were examined. Regression analyses were fit to predict end-of-year mental health climate and social-emotional teaching practices from time spent in multiple consultation activities and different areas of consultation content focus, when controlling for beginning-of-year classroom climate/practices score.
Results: Descriptive statistics indicated variability across classrooms in the amount of time consultants spent engaging in consultation activities (Table 1) and in the proportion of consultation meeting time spent on a specific content areas (Table 2). Regression analyses indicated that the total amount of time spent in various consultation activities (e.g., teacher meetings, observations) did not consistently predict end-of-year classroom climate or teaching practices. However, the proportion of time in teacher consultation meetings dedicated to specific areas of content focus differentially predicted end-of-year classroom mental health climate and social-emotional teaching practices, when controlling for beginning-of-year classroom climate and practices. For instance, a greater proportion of meetings spent on social-emotional learning strategies predicted higher end-of-year social-emotional teaching practices (B = .537, p = 0.03; F(2,18) = 3.794, p =0.04).
Conclusion: Our findings add to the growing literature on ECMHC by describing and quantifying the services provided by ECMHC consultants. We examined these elements of consultation related to changes in classroom environment. These findings begin to unpack how ECMHC services promote quality early learning environments and in turn children’s social, emotional, and behavioral well-being.

Authors

• Karyn Hartz, Georgetown University School of Medicine
  Presenting Author

• Erin Mathis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Peter Rakita, Georgetown University School of Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Abby Carlson, AppleTree Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Celene Elizabeth Domitrovich, Georgetown University School of Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author