Technical Assistance Partnership for Child and Family Mental Health

Early Childhood System of Care Community of Practice Call
1/18/06, 2:30 ET

Everything you always wanted to know about developing an early childhood system of care community but did not know who to ask

Featured Presenter: Charlie Biss, Vermont Children Upstream Services (CUPS)

Vermont Children Upstream Services (CUPS) is a graduated and sustained System of Care Community that covers children birth to 6. The project also works with teen mothers and fathers.
Early mistake made: Seeing the grant as a mental health grant instead of a system of care grant. It actually seeded money to join an existing early childhood system of care. Lesson: Don’t create a new system, use what is in the community and build from that.
Message heard: “We don’t need ‘pull-out’ therapy.” Provide for prevention and the social-emotional needs of children.
Lessons Learned:
- We need to infuse mental health into natural settings such as early childhood programs.
- We need to develop a public health approach, that is, focus on health promotion and prevention, intervention is not enough. Provide training throughout the system.
- We need to focus on supports and protective factors for children at risk.
- We need to get to know our early childhood partners well and learn the early childhood language. It became a “cultural exchange program.” Goodwill is very important to nurture.
- Diagnoses are not used in the early childhood world.
- Consultation is extremely important, needed and wanted.
When the project started, we had a variety of groups that represented the early childhood world (Headstart, Success by 6, parent-child centers, childcare centers, early education, healthy babies, alcohol and drug abuse programs, parents, etc) – 70-100 people at all meetings. à we knew that if we engaged all these groups, we had a good chance of sustainability.
As we developed relationships at the local level, we urged people to use different ways to fund services (e.g. Medicaid) with the caveat that they would use savings for supporting SOC.
We got all early childhood funders together à loosened up a lot of the bureaucratic barriers.
As we were implementing the grant, anything that could be funded by Medicaid was funded by Medicaid; anything else was funded by the grant. An example is the use of EPSDT administrative monies to fund consultation.
To sustain the project, Vermont needed half of their total budget from the legislature and half was being paid by Medicaid. Much preliminary work was done with legislators by the early childhood partners and their advocates which made obtaining the legislative money easier.
3 Pieces of Advice:
- You can never have too many partners
- You can never take too much time to understand your partners’ needs
- Focus on health promotion, prevention, as well as intervention

Questions and Answers

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	Early Childhood System of Care Community of Practice Call 1/18/06, 2:30 ET Everything you always wanted to know about developing an early childhood system of care community but did not know who to ask Featured Presenter: Charlie Biss, Vermont Children Upstream Services (CUPS) Vermont Children Upstream Services (CUPS) is a graduated and sustained System of Care Community that covers children birth to 6. The project also works with teen mothers and fathers. Early mistake made: Seeing the grant as a mental health grant instead of a system of care grant. It actually seeded money to join an existing early childhood system of care. Lesson: Don’t create a new system, use what is in the community and build from that. Message heard: “We don’t need ‘pull-out’ therapy.” Provide for prevention and the social-emotional needs of children. Lessons Learned: We need to infuse mental health into natural settings such as early childhood programs. We need to develop a public health approach, that is, focus on health promotion and prevention, intervention is not enough. Provide training throughout the system. We need to focus on supports and protective factors for children at risk. We need to get to know our early childhood partners well and learn the early childhood language. It became a “cultural exchange program.” Goodwill is very important to nurture. Diagnoses are not used in the early childhood world. Consultation is extremely important, needed and wanted. When the project started, we had a variety of groups that represented the early childhood world (Headstart, Success by 6, parent-child centers, childcare centers, early education, healthy babies, alcohol and drug abuse programs, parents, etc) – 70-100 people at all meetings. à we knew that if we engaged all these groups, we had a good chance of sustainability. As we developed relationships at the local level, we urged people to use different ways to fund services (e.g. Medicaid) with the caveat that they would use savings for supporting SOC. We got all early childhood funders together à loosened up a lot of the bureaucratic barriers. As we were implementing the grant, anything that could be funded by Medicaid was funded by Medicaid; anything else was funded by the grant. An example is the use of EPSDT administrative monies to fund consultation. To sustain the project, Vermont needed half of their total budget from the legislature and half was being paid by Medicaid. Much preliminary work was done with legislators by the early childhood partners and their advocates which made obtaining the legislative money easier. 3 Pieces of Advice: You can never have too many partners You can never take too much time to understand your partners’ needs Focus on health promotion, prevention, as well as intervention Questions and Answers