Our initiative
Foundations For Success is a group of parents and professionals committed to finding a new way care for young children with mental health needs in Ramsey County, Minnesota.
Launching the initiative
Historically, the children’s mental health system has been burdened by complexities and inefficiencies. Professionals often would face challenges when searching for funding sources or coordinating across settings. Worse yet, families frequently would encounter hurdles just to get into the system–and then even more when navigating to find the program that best met their needs. The result was missed opportunities to help children.
Over the past 15 years, a broad collection of more than a hundred parents and professionals has been working together to figure out a better system.
Following a survey in 2000–which shockingly found that the primary sources for mental health care in our community were child protection and special education–we began building a plan for creating real change in our early childhood mental health system.
In late 2004, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation committed a major, multi-year investment to help us carry out our plan. Shortly afterward, our group
officially
named
itself Foundations for
Success–recognizing that
early childhood mental
health is the foundation
on which happy and healthy children are nurturedour group officially named itself Foundations for Success–recognizing that early childhood mental health is the foundation on which happy and healthy children are nurtured.
Our goals and strategies
We want to transform the continuum of mental health care for young children between the ages of birth and 5 in Ramsey County. To do this, we are building partnerships and changing systems in four key areas:
- Identifying children who need help. Too often, parents report that they had concerns about their child’s mental health, but they didn’t know where to go for help. We are working with community partners to integrate mental health screening into routine appointments so that parents are given earlier and more natural opportunities to discuss concerns.
- Ensuring the right services are available. Foundations for Success is working with families, early childhood professionals, and mental health professionals to ensure that we have a complete continuum of early childhood mental health services. This means that families can choose the programming that best fits their cultural preferences and service needs.
- Making sure families can access services. Our group is providing early childhood mental health services in locations where families can easily access them. We also are striving to ensure that the services are developmentally, culturally, and linguistically appropriate.
- Raising awareness among the community. Foundations for Success is working with early childhood professionals, mental health professionals, medical professionals, and policy makers to increase the awareness of mental health needs of young children and the benefits of early intervention.
Next steps and how you can help
Our upcoming goals include adding more services to our continuum, strengthening connections between critical resources in our community, engaging more parents in our initiative, and gaining investments from policymakers to sustain the progress we’ve made. But, we’ll need more help in order to reach all of our goals. Your involvement is critical!
