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Early Childhood Social-Emotional and Mental Health Navigation Guide

 

Introduction
The goal of the Colorado Early Childhood Social-Emotional and Mental Health Navigation Guide is to support programs, communities and systems as they navigate through the decision making process of identifying practice, policy, and funding strategies that match their capacity, resources, and readiness and meet their local needs and goals. The guide is intended to increase knowledge of and confidence in accessing community mental health resources and information.  In this way, it should facilitate links to appropriate services for children who need them and provide information to practitioners and families about community resources, thereby increasing the number with access to needed services and resources.

There is also additional information about research validity and other important criteria such as identification of evidence-based programs and approaches and promising practices. The Guide can also help to identify geographic gaps in services and demographic disparities, factors related to those gaps and disparities, as well as barriers to implementation. Such information should be helpful in decision making.

Your feedback matters!
Once you have completed your search, we would appreciate your returning to this page and clicking on this LINK TO A SHORT SURVEY. The survey will ask you questions about the usability of the SEMH Navigation Guide in helping you to achieve your goals. Your feedback matters because your answers will be used to adapt and improve on the design of the database.


LINK TO NAVIGATION GUIDE - PUBLIC LOGIN​

LINK TO NAVIGATION GUIDE - ADMINISTRATOR LOGIN 

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Communities can use the Guide to: (1) locate appropriate services,  (2) inform their decisions about early childhood mental health  program adoption based on their unique community needs, and (3) inform their strategic planning through an online, interactive decision making process.  This Guide can help to provide a framework for community planners to identify and select initiatives/programs/services and navigate available opportunities and options.  The expectation is that communities will have a better understanding of, and access to, initiatives/programs/services that support healthy social-emotional development and mental wellbeing.

Definitions

An initiative is defined as an action or strategic plan intended to address/solve a specific problem, e.g., child poverty.
 
A program is defined as system of related projects and/or services designed to meet an individual or community need, e.g., Part C.
 
A service is defined as a professional activity focused on providing for a specific individual or community need, e.g., early childhood mental health services.

 

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The Guide is populated with profiles of initiatives/programs/services that are available for use in communities across Colorado which promote social-emotional development and early childhood mental health. The profile information includes details about setting, ages and populations served, geographical location, cost, capacity, and other relevant program information.

There is a search feature that allows users to find initiatives/programs/services based on specific criteria and filtering. Through filtering, users should be able to see a cross initiative/program/service comparison that allows them to make informed decisions about those that are most suitable for their respective needs.

 
Definitions
 
An initiative is defined as an action or strategic plan intended to address/solve a specific problem, e.g., child poverty.
 
A program is defined as system of related projects and/or services designed to meet an individual or community need, e.g., Part C.
 
A service is defined as a professional activity focused on providing for a specific individual or community need, e.g., early childhood mental health services.
 

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The idea for this on-line, interactive Early Childhood Social-Emotional/Mental Health Navigation Guide grew out of a meeting in 2010 where stakeholders brainstormed about ways to better serve communities in developing and improving early childhood social-emotional development and mental health systems.  The Guide was developed by JFK Partners at the University of Colorado and the Partnership for Families and Children.

The need for such a Guide was motivated by the rapid growth in resources and opportunities related to children’s social-emotional development and mental health in Colorado.  Although our state has successfully developed a number of initiatives/programs/services that address the needs of children, parents, and providers with regard to children’s social-emotional development and mental health, two unresolved issues remain.

 

First, there are disparities in access to these resources and opportunities related to state geography, demographics, and funding/payer issues.  Second, while there have been recent advances in the use of evaluation, evidence and expert opinion (used particularly when there is an underdeveloped evidence-base) to assess social-emotional and mental health approaches and programs for young children, application of this information to the local policy and practice context at the point of direct service has been limited.

 

Along with an increase in opportunities comes an increase in the need for informed decision making so that arbitrary choices do not have to be made about what programs, services and trainings to use and about what approaches and initiatives can best meet a community’s  specific needs. This Guide is intended to help communities and systems navigate through the decision making process related to social-emotional and mental health resources, curricula, approaches and professional development and to demonstrate a clearer relation between inputs (initiatives/programs/services) and outputs (child, family and community benefits).