Changing systems

We’ve set goals to change the early childhood mental health system in four key areas: screening, access, services, and awareness. The focused and collaborative efforts of our partners have helped us reach several milestones already!

Our outcomes thus far

In a short period, our committed group of parents and professionals already has experienced notable successes. Together, we have conducted an inventory of needs and capacities, added services, implemented screening procedures, adopted measurement tools, established project workgroups, and built community engagement and momentum.

Some more examples of our recent outcomes are:

• More than 12,000 young children were screened through early 2007, and a system now is in place to screen every child in Ramsey County. In addition, hundreds of children and families have received services in more than 40 classrooms and a variety of home and agency settings.

• We’re helping the authors of the Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional (ASQ:SE)–the screening instrument that our community has adopted–to standardize the tool for non-English speakers, such as Hmong and Somali.

• We are developing new ways for primary care providers to complete mental health screenings during well-child checks in their clinics. We’re also collaborating with physicians’ associations and others to help pediatricians to be reimbursed for doing this work.

• Our group has developed creative ways to use early-intervention funding to develop a “one-point” contact for parents and professionals who have concerns about a child’s social and emotional development.

• We are consulting with other regional groups to help other communities in Minnesota and beyond to replicate our unique early childhood mental health system.

• We’ve established a collaborative infrastructure in which leadership, decision-making, and implementation responsibilities are shared by a number of working committees.

• Our shared experiences–such as using a common set of evaluation tools and participating in a broader research effort–have introduced concepts, definitions, and common language that we all use across our multiple systems.