Monthly Early Childhood Conference Call Series
October 17, 2006

Participating:

Rhode Island, Oregon, California, Pennsylvania, Florida, Connecticut, Maine; Isadora Hare-Maternal and Child Health Bureau; Susan Stromberg and Lisa Rubinstein-Child, Adolescent and Family Branch, CMHS, SAMHSA; Stacey Lee-National Evaluation; Roxane Kaufmann and Neal Horen-National Technical Assistance Center, Georgetown; Ken Martinez and Kristin Roney-Technical Assistance Partnership.

General:

The Conference Call Series is resuming with this call. We will be asking two early childhood communities to present in one conference call. Communities are asked to talk for 20 minutes about successes, initiatives, challenges, strategies for overcoming challenges and any other relevant issues. In intervening months, conference calls will focus on issues that were raised in the previous month’s call. Specialists may be invited to address the issues raised.

Sarasota, Florida:

Logic Model Development-Sarasota brought in diverse people from the community. The goal was to engage the community in what the Sarasota SOC could be, educating people and to have a shared understanding of where they are going. They distinguish between the “Big S” and the “Little s” system of care, referring to the larger statewide system of care and the system of care that they are creating with the Cooperative Agreement.

Community wide meetings included community stakeholders, families, early childhood community, community college workers, altogether a very diverse group of people. Sarasota is engaging the community by using “social capital.” Sarasota is working with BMHI on this process.

The logic model is viewed as a living document. There will be future outreach to different communities that weren’t able to contribute earlier. As new issue comes up, the document will change. It will also guide the evaluation process. They will also crosswalk outcomes with national evaluation instruments.

Governance Board has 28 members. They will be deciding on their roles, responsibilities and structure. They will have oversight of the System of care.
They will need to add and engage more youth and families. Committee meetings are open to all who would like to attend. Sarasota is in the process of hiring a permanent project director and youth coordinator. They are exploring how to best use youth coordinator. They are trying to decide about the role of the cultural and linguistic competence coordinator.

Family involvement–One of Sarasota’s strengths is their family involvement and acceptance of families. The management team really listens to the family voice. The first contact with families will be with a family member (family advocate). They have 4 positions and 1 is hired. They are a Chapter of the Federation of Families and are in the process of becoming a 501 c-3.

Clinical services-2 families are enrolled. They just had their first child family team meeting last week. Nine people were involved, all of who were invited by the family. They have 2 wraparound coordinators and 2 more will be hired. They hope to do training for wraparound between January and March, 2007.
Seven staff went to the “Clinical Institute” to get training to work with infants/children who have fetal alcohol syndrome. They are starting a year long certification program for staff and community providers on trauma.

Multnomah County, Oregon:

Oregon has a statewide wraparound initiative called “Wraparound Oregon.” The Multnomah County System of Care will use the Wraparound Oregon governance structure. Gary Blau came to Oregon about a month ago to help to coordinate funding statewide. The governance structure has 7-8 committees under one overall planning committee. The logic model is always a draft to be revised as needed.

Their population of focus is child welfare clients. The Educational Service District (ESD) holds the cooperative agreement. It is a strong partnership between the school district and child welfare. The County Mental Health agency has 11 part time early childhood specialists participating and the ESD is providing 1 education advocate, in addition to the sponsorship. Child welfare funds 4 positions. Private and public agencies are giving support, including Head Start

They have four family team facilitators and will be hiring four more. They are using the National Wraparound Initiative Model. Their first intake meeting will be 10/18/06.

They are developing a workforce development plan. The training director will do workforce development.

Multnomah County has a strong evaluation team that is working well. They have 5 family members on their evaluation team. Their National Evaluation Site Visit was last week.

They are bringing two wraparound trainers for 2 ½ days. Families will also be trained in wraparound.

Families are also involved in developing policy. They have a Family Advisory Council. No meetings are held without families present. Eventually they will require 51% family representation on all committees. They still need to add more families to the Council.

They are in the process of developing a family organization that is located in the County. This will probably involve joining with other partner groups in the community.

They have signed memoranda of understanding with all the school districts, child welfare and juvenile justice as well as directly with schools. The agreement is with all the superintendents. There is good communication. All records go with the child if the child changes schools.

Clinical Services-They have parent partners through Parents Anonymous who work with child welfare. Parents are getting children back after sobriety and some then continue as peer mentors.

Multnomah County still considers cultural and linguistic competence a challenge. They need more work to do this in area.

They are working on getting youth involvement off the ground. It has been challenging. They want to get teens and teen moms that have been involved in the system involved.

Social marketing-They are getting a full time person. There is a strong social marketing committee. They are also doing outreach to the pediatric committee

Open Discussion:

Los Angeles focuses on just a small part of LA. Hearing grander scales is interesting.

Family evaluation team members are involved in hiring interviewers, developing of materials, social marking, developing questions for local evaluation and went to the Atlanta meeting. The families are trained first. Some are trained through Parents Anonymous.

Enrollment of children-
PA - is not enrolling children yet. There has been a lot of community participation, but implementation has been delayed. It will be a few more months.
CT - Building Blocks has 8 potential children ready for services. They are waiting for IRB approval and hoping to get it in the next week or two.
LA – waiting for final ok. They haven’t started enrolling children. It should happen soon.

Outreach to pediatric community-
Local pediatric society tends to be progressive and proactive. They are a responsive group to work with.

CT- did a presentation to pediatricians and are doing a kickoff at a hospital which will include pediatricians.

The Maternal and Child Health Bureau has awarded “Collaborative Office Rounds” grants that bring together pediatricians and child psychiatrists. Isadora will get us a list of the grantees so that SOCs can collaborate with them.

Sarasota, through a state grant, mailed out cards to communities and pediatricians with info on young children’s mental health.

Meeting with Gary Blau regarding Early Childhood Issues
A set of issues were raised at the Training Institutes that Ken, Roxane and Neal were going to follow up on with Gary Blau, Chief, Child, Adolescent and Family Branch, CMHS, SAMHSA. That meeting took place on October 17, 2006.

The issues included: Difficulty in diagnosing infants; Diagnosing imminent risk in infants and young children; the need for intervention with the parent/child dyad; the use of deferred diagnosis; and the ability to count the number of children impacted by the Cooperative Agreement but not enrolled in the MACRO study.

First, Gary said that early childhood is a priority for him. Overall, he would like to use the Early Childhood Community of Practice to assist him in several areas including language for the next GFA.

We always have to be cognizant of the federal statute language that focuses on children with SED. At the same time, he is willing hear creative ideas about how to serve infants, young children and their families within the scope of the legislative language. For example, he considers the DC 0-3R as the authoritative diagnostic manual for this age group. He considers children that are diagnosed with the DC 0-3R in need of intervention. He would like the EC COP to assist him in writing how that could happen. He wants to see how the outcomes for children who aren’t served or diagnosed compared to those who are. How can the axes in the DC 0-3 be used in this study is an outstanding question. This is a potential research study that can be pursued by some of the EC communities.

Maybe a sub-group can talk with Zero to Three to work on this. Joy Kaufman and Ilene Bursin have been in dialogue about pursuing a research grant.

A fuller description of the meeting with Gary Blau will be posted on the listserve and webpage in the next few weeks.

The Early Childhood Youth Involvement Workgroup has final draft of findings based upon input and feedback from the regional meetings and Training Institutes Networking Meetings. That Draft will be posted on listserve and webpage for feedback from everyone. After feedback is received and incorporated, a “Guidance” from the Workgroup will be issued.

Other Business:

Based upon our poll, it appears that Thursdays are a better day to have conference calls. Therefore, they will be scheduled on Thursdays.

The next call with two communities will be December 7, 2006 from 2:30-4:00 pm Eastern Time. The number will be the same. Allegheny County and one other early childhood community will present. We have not set a date for a November call but that will be posted on the webpage and listserv when ready.

 

 

The call-in information for all of our monthly calls is:
Number: 1-877-326-2337, ID Number: 4294308#