Trauma-informed practice and preschool supports (tipps): an attachment-centered, trauma-informed, equity-advancing, team-based care model for children from birth to 12 with significant mental health…

Trauma-informed practice and preschool supports (tipps): an attachment-centered, trauma-informed, equity-advancing, team-based care model for children from birth to 12 with significant mental health complications and their families, along with an early childhood workforce development pilot to support preschool classrooms facing adversity. Tipps is a collaboration of the reginald s. Lourie center for infants and young children (LC), a leading early childhood mental health (ecmh) and a special education center, montgomery county department of health and human services (mcdhhs) and project echo (extension for community healthcare outcomes). The tipps project aims to provide specialized early childhood mental health services to infants and young children ages birth to 12 and their families in montgomery county and adjoining counties, such as prince george's county, who are facing a range of emotional and behavioral disorders severely affecting their ability to be successful in: school and childcare settings, homes. And community. A second component of tipps will provide special education elementary school students with positive behavioral interventions and supports (pbis) to help reduce learning disruption and unsafe behaviors. The third component of tipps will be to pilot early childhood mental health tele-consultation and mentoring projects with early childhood educators in preschool settings through project echo with several sites across the country. Prior to covid, this population was already at a higher risk for serious emotional disturbance due to exposure to traumatic experiences - past and present - that stressed the caregiver-child relationship which functions to fuel healthy development. These families are vulnerable to the well-documented, long-term consequences of adverse childhood experiences. Children's ecmh challenges include trauma, anxiety, depression, attachment problems, attention deficit, social skill deficits, and disruptive disorders. Covid and racial injustice have exacerbated family stressors and inequities, including lack of in-person education and increased social isolation, resulting in concerning stress levels in children and caregivers. At least 80% of children will be medicaid-eligible from montgomery county, maryland and nearby counties. The majority of tipps participants will be from communities of color, with spanish being the primary language spoken at home. Tipps seeks to increase access to ecmh services, including evidence-based practices (ebps), such as: play therapy child parent psychotherapy (CCP), and circle of security-parenting (COS-p), and therapeutic nursery program (TNP) - an ecmh prevention-intervention program; too strengthen the ecmh workforce by providing pbis training to special education team, and to improve preschool student outcome by supporting the EC workforce through tele-consultation, and implementing the best practice echo model. Tipps will serve children from diverse ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds: 30% latino, 20% multiracial, 30% african american, and 20% caucasian, and 80% medicaid eligible. Over 30% are dual language learners, with immigration challenges and spanish often being the first language. Tipps anticipates serving 115 infants and young children, 75 parents and caregivers, and 40 professionals over the one year of this project's lifetime.