Text on screen: IECMHC Network, Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Network: Connect, Reflect, Grow
Text on screen: Kim Nall, Tribal Child Care Association of California
On screen: A female with glasses sitting on a couch in front of a table with candles and plants. A mirror is over her shoulder.
Kim: The Network provided a unique approach for our center, and that was in that it really gave sustainable tools, techniques, and skills that were able to be utilized when the network walked away or moved to more of an advising position. If we needed you, they’re there. But what happened was that through the application process, this was through the California Inclusion Behavior Consultation, but the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation works very much similar, and it’s a seamless approach to providing services that start with really getting to know and understand the program and the teachers, and this is not specifically for families or a particular child. This is for providers and teachers to be able to get support in managing and identifying techniques and support systems that help them to have skills and management practices that enhance their classrooms in a way that support all children, and meet children where they’re at, and help them to evolve as teachers.
So, there were observations, there was opportunities to have reflective practices together. There was a really strength-based approach, which I love. I love that strength-based approach. It’s not a way to say, “You’re doing this wrong, that this is something that’s a ‘you’ problem.” It’s a, “Have you ever thought about perhaps doing it this way?” or “When I look at this classroom environment, I’m not necessarily seeing a visual schedule that might be available for a child and children to identify that there is a time and a place for certain things to happen”, and you’re referring back to it all of the time so that children sense that control in their world and you can kind of have those skills.
Something as simple as that in order to be able to give classroom management and to be able to give children also skills in order to help them be able to self-soothe and find their own regulation skills, and that takes practice. It came with such great coaching, and mentoring, and practice, and action that the teachers, just eventually, it was like, “Aha, we’ve got this!” Then we weren’t contacting, in this case the Network, as often because we were being sustainable with the skills and tools that were given to our program.
