Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC)
Support social-emotional development in Montana’s early childhood system
What is Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC)?
A prevention-based approach that pairs a mental health consultant with adults who work with infants and young children where they learn and grow, such as child care, preschool, home visiting, early intervention and their home.
What is it not?
It is not direct therapy or treatment.
Mental health consultation equips caregivers to facilitate children’s healthy social and emotional development.
What is social and emotional development?
Social development is a child’s ability to create and sustain meaningful relationships with adults and other children. Emotional development is a child’s ability to express, recognize and manage their emotions and respond appropriately to others’ emotions.
What’s happening in Montana?
Create
Support
Build
Learn
Grow
Thanks to the partnership with our many dedicated health care and child care experts and resources, several IECMHC pilot programs have launched in Montana to implement a variety of models, settings, providers, and scope/sizes. This historical state investment in early childhood has provided years of research and development to help shape our journey toward the following goals:
CREATE a mental health consultant training program:
Montana-specific education program infused with updated knowledge and tailored to our state’s unique geography, population and systems
Standardized training that blends new and existing curriculum to unify the workforce
Montana certification criteria and pathway for mental health consultants and reflective supervisors
SUPPORT the mental health consultant workforce:
Ongoing professional development and training
Community of practice
Reflective supervision from mentors
Peer networking and support
Repository for policies, procedures and forms
BUILD the infrastructure and system to deploy workforce to early childhood settings:
Marketing and education campaign
Connect consultants to child care providers and support the relationship
In-person, group and virtual consultation and office hours to child care providers
Website registry to locate, research and access mental health consultants
LEARN and GROW:
Implement lessons into current program initiatives
Enroll, support and deploy more cohorts with an expanded capacity
A program to support Montana’s early childhood providers and educators with an infrastructure of training, tools, and a networking community so they can be more confident and capable in their important role.
A new collaboration
DPHHS, Mountain Pacific and the University of Montana are partnering to unify a workforce of early childhood mental health consultants to support providers where they are.
This project is funded in whole or in part under a contract with Montana Department of Public Health and Human Service. The statements herein do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Montana DPHHS.
