SUMMARY OF POSITION
The ECMH project contracts with behavioral health and early childhood specialists to place these contractors in childcare homes and centers that serve at-risk children for up to 15 hours per week to work with childcare staff and parents on effective response to behavioral challenges. Ultimately, this coordinated work will seek to achieve three-overarching goals: 1) reduce rates of suspension and expulsion in early care and education settings and work to eliminate these practices entirely in El Paso County; 2) enhance the local system of support for the early childhood educator workforce as outlined in HB-20-1053; and 3) directly link young children and families to individualized financial resources/services with the intent to stabilize home environments and support the overall mental health of our most vulnerable populations.
RESPONSIBILITIES + DUTIES
•Ensures relationship-based, trauma-informed, and reflective support is available to earlychildhood professionals caring for young children within early childhood programsreceiving ECMHC services.•Supports systems-building efforts by collaborating with community partners and programleaders to enhance early childhood mental health supports and strengthen the overallinfrastructure for young children and families.•Provides supervision and mentorship to contractors, ensuring alignment with programgoals, professional development opportunities, and the integration of best practices inearly childhood mental health.•Partners with center administration of early childhood education programs to: 1) meet thesocial and emotional skill building of teaching staff; 2) create policies and proceduresnecessary to promote practice supportive of early childhood mental health; and 3) formpartnerships with families that are equitable and focused on increasing the well-being ofthe child and family unit.•Promotes the mental health and social-emotional development of children through child-level ECMHC utilizing outcome evaluation tools, including the Devereux Early ChildhoodAssessment-Clinical (DECA- C); The Preschool Expulsion Risk Measure (PERM) and the Satisfaction Survey, entered into required state databases within the required timeframes.
•Provides families attending all participating programs with information regardingcommunity resources, child development, kindergarten readiness, and kindergartentransition and ensure the provision of a kindergarten transition meeting to include thekindergarten teacher, ECMHC, and family members to review current strengths, needs,behavior supports, and transition strategies for all children currently receiving child-levelECMHC services.
•Provides guidance to professionals and caregivers to effectively understand and supportchildren’s positive behavior and development through the provision of classroom-levelECMHC and utilizes outcome evaluation tools to include Climate of Healthy Interactionsfor Learning & Development (CHILD) and the Satisfaction Survey, entered into requiredstate databases within the required timeframes.
•Promotes high-quality interactions and relationships between adults and children throughthe provision of program-level ECMHC utilizing outcome evaluation tools, including theSatisfaction Survey, entered into required state databases within required timeframes.
•Develops, promotes, and provides community-level ECMHC training focused on social-emotional practices for professionals to support programs and/or community-levelECMHC.
•Develops, promotes, and provides community-level ECMHC training focused on social-emotional practices for families to support program and/or community-level ECMHC.
•Links early childhood programs with quality improvement coaching as needed to addressclassroom-level needs that are better met through coaching rather than ECMHC atembedded programs.
•Participates in Individualized Services and Support Team (ISST) meetings for children atrisk of suspension/expulsion. These meetings will be coordinated and facilitated by JI-AFK, for children at-risk of suspension and/or expulsion from the participating centers.
•Attends all ECMHC training and meetings as required through the Colorado Departmentof Human Services and/or the Office of Early Childhood.
•Works collaboratively with JI Research, Data, + Evaluation Manager and/or otherrequesting partners to collect and report data for programming.
•Engages in productive and respectful communications with JI leadership and colleagues.
•Displays a positive attitude, works well with others, and accepts direction well.
•Works well under stressful and emotionally-taxing circumstances and engages ineffective self-care.
•Works effectively with those representing a variety of needs and abilities, with varyingsocioeconomic, cultural, and racial backgrounds.
•Recognizes that we hold attitudes and beliefs that can detrimentally influence ourperceptions of and interactions with individuals who are diverse from ourselves.
•Treats children and families with respect, dignity, and empathy.
•Reviews work for accuracy, clarity, timeliness, and conformance with procedures andprocesses.
•Commits to JI’s organizational mission, vision, and operating philosophies in compliancewith instructions, policies, and guidance.
•Assumes other tasks and projects as assigned.