Integrating evidence-based practices into early childhood mental health clinics: A dynamic approach to strengthening the resilience of children birth to five and families

Abstract

This paper describes a dynamic process of workforce development, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based practices (EBPs) within an early childhood mental health (ECMH) network serving children birth to five and their families. The key feature of an effective structure and multi-year process to train clinical service providers in evidence-based practices is the capacity building cycle: Assess, Select, Train, Evaluate. The New York City (NYC) ECMH network assessed the capacity and competencies of early childhood clinical practitioners and selected evidence-based practices and models that are: 1) appropriate for the birth to five population, 2) dyadic or family based, and 3) trauma-informed and/or strengths-based. We describe the evaluation, needs assessments, and best practices that support the effective use of evidence-based practices. It is important to flexibly respond to the needs of the community when selecting evidence-based practices, paying particular attention to equity issues. Considerations to note are that the few EBPs available for this birth to five population are costly, have a limited number of trainers, may not have a train-the-trainer model, and rarely have these EBPs been evaluated in multi-lingual or diverse U.S. communities. The success of implementing a multi-year cycle in NYC lies in having a funded training center closely linked to the workforce.