The brooklyn parenting center will address the lack of comprehensive integrated developmental, behavioral and mental health services for families during the first thousand days of life, from…

The brooklyn parenting center will address the lack of comprehensive integrated developmental, behavioral and mental health services for families during the first thousand days of life, from conception to age 2, in the borough of brooklyn, new york. To address this GAP in services, the brooklyn parenting center will offer an innovative, resilience-based program for families and our surrounding communities. This program integrates a trauma informed psychosocial approach to families from conception within the obgyn office, the postpartum recovery unit and the pediatric primary care setting, and aims to expand access to early childhood and parental mental health services to a vulnerable population of children and families who are at risk of adverse health outcomes. Additionally, the brooklyn parenting center will identify and address psychosocial risk factors through routine social needs screening and referrals to community-based partners. The parenting center aims to begin upstream at conception and follow a family through the cticial period of brain development in the first two years of life. The goals of the project include 1)increase the capacity of maimonides hospital to reduce unmet social and emotional needs in the first thousand days of life, 2) decrease maternal perinatal mood disorders by integrating a preventive model of psychosocial care with clinical mental health specialists in the first thousand days, and 3) connect families to local community based organizations that are able to address unmet social needs in the first thousand days of life. The objectives of the project are to 1) screen 80% of patients in the prenatal period (80% of 1500=1200 patients) and 80% of patients in the postpartum period (80% of 6,660=5280) for a) social needs, b) mental health and c) adverse childhood experiences, 2) enroll 1,000 families in the brooklyn parenting center by providing integrated mental health in the prenatal, postpartum and infant period with clinical mental health providers, and 3) refer 500 families to community based organizations based on needs assessed through screening tools