Transforming Transitions to Kindergarten: A Family-Provider Team Approach

Personnel	Introduction
Goals & Objectives	Major Activities
Tools /Products	Publications and Presentations
Latest Updates	Complete Project Narrative (pdf)

Personnel

Beth Green, Ph.D., Principal Investigator
Anna Malsch, Ph.D., Project Manager
Eileen Brennan, Ph.D., Project Collaborator
Brianne Hood, Graduate Research Assistant

Introduction  

In response to NIDRR’s absolute priority of increasing family participation and supporting community integration and successful transition, the purpose of this project is to develop, implement, and evaluate a two-pronged family-centered strategy for supporting the successful transition of children with emotional/behavioral challenges from early childhood settings to kindergarten. The project will involve three interrelated sets of activities. First, a synthesis of existing research will be conducted, focusing on how integrated mental health supports, and in particular mental health consultation, promote the success and integration of children with challenging behaviors in community-based settings. Second, the research team will develop and test a two-level intervention for supporting children with emotional and behavioral challenges and their families as they transition to kindergarten. The first component will focus on developing the organizational capacity of early childhood (preschool) programs for implementing effective mental health and kindergarten transition supports for children with emotional/behavioral challenges and their families. The second component of the intervention will build on this organizational capacity by implementing and evaluating family-driven transition intervention teams to support successful transition of these children to kindergarten. Finally, we will use the results of the intervention study to develop an integrated set of evidence-based training materials that will be disseminated to families, early childhood educators, mental health professionals, and school personnel.

The proposed project builds on four of the prior research projects by this RRTC. The first, Project SUCCEED. tested a curriculum for establishing parent-provider partnerships in addressing children’s emotional/behavioral problems in Head Start programs (Saifer, Friesen, Gordon, Banek, & Tuner, 2002). The second, Guidance for Early Childhood Program Design, surveyed over 800 Head Start teachers, administrators, mental health providers, and parents, and developed and pilot tested research-based training in effective organizational strategies for implementing high quality mental health services, including mental health consultation, for children in preschool settings (Green, Everhart, Gettman & Gordon, 2003; Green, Everhart & Gordon, 2004a; Green, Everhart, & Gordon, 2004b). The third project, Models of Inclusion in Child Care, identified essential strategies for the successful inclusion of children with emotional/behavioral problems in child care centers serving diverse populations (Brennan, Bradley, Ama, & Cawood, 2003). The fourth, the Early Childhood Transition Pilot, collected in-depth qualitative information about the transition experiences of children with serious emotional/behavioral challenges and their families (Lehman, Friesen, & Brennan, 2001). This study identified barriers to successful kindergarten transition, including lack of parent access to information about kindergarten sites prior to transition (e.g., the name of the child’s new teacher), absence of systematic transition planning and procedures, negative attitudes from elementary school staff, and difficulties ensuring that children received prescribed medications while in kindergarten settings (Lehman, Friesen, & Brennan, 2001).

The proposed research will build on study findings, training materials, and curricula from previous RRTC projects. The goal of the project is to promote the successful integration of children with emotional/behavioral challenges into community-based early childhood settings and to ensure the successful transition of these children into kindergarten.

Goals & Objectives

The project objectives are to:

1. Collect, analyze, and disseminate the evidence base regarding the effectiveness of mental health consultation in early childhood settings.
2. Integrate the results of this review of mental health consultation with the knowledge of promising practices in early childhood mental health (derived from earlier RRTC research), and with the empirical research on effective transition practices, and from this construct an expanded conceptual framework that addresses transition to kindergarten for children with emotional/behavioral problems.
3. Develop, implement, and test an intervention to increase the organizational capacity of early childhood and school settings to provide integrated supports that meet the needs of children with emotional/behavioral problems and their families so that they may remain in community preschools and transition successfully to kindergarten.
4. Collaborate with families, preschool providers, mental health professionals, and elementary school personnel to develop, implement, and test a transition intervention that is individualized, family-driven, and culturally appropriate.
5. Publish and disseminate knowledge about effective transition via research articles, evidence-based training materials, and other products to family organizations and key professional groups (e.g., early childhood, education, mental health and other providers).

Major Activities

The project has three major research activities:

1. Systematic Review of the Evidence Base for the Effectiveness of Mental Health Consultation in Early Childhood Settings
2. Organizational Training Intervention & Evaluation (Table 1)
3. Design, Pilot Implementation, and Evaluation of a Family-Driven Transition Intervention (Table 2)

Table 1.  Overall Research design for the organizational training intervention and evaluation

Table 2. Overall research design for the transition intervention

Tools/Products

• Mental Health Consultation Resources
• Transition to Kindergarten: Training Presentation
• Example Interagency Agreement between Head Start and School Districts
• Transition Best Practices Matrix
• Transition To-Do List: Getting My Child Ready for Kindergarten
• Individualized Plan for Transition Support

Recent Publications and Presentations

Publications:

• EARLY CHILDHOOD MENTAL HEALTH CONSULTATION: AN EVALUATION TOOLKIT
  
  For states, communities, agencies and programs investing in early childhood mental health consultation
  and committed to quality data. This web-based resource combines a brief review of the literature and
  current research addressing the effectiveness of early childhood mental health consultation with guidance for designing and implementing program evaluation. It will help states, communities, and programs increase
  their capacity for high-quality evaluation of early childhood mental health consultation in community-based settings. Researchers, policy makers, and program evaluation teams will find:
  

  • A brief review of the evidence base, current issues, and questions;
  • Defining characteristics of early childhood mental health consultation;
  • Components of high quality evaluation and sample logic models;
  • Evaluation tools to measure both process and outcome,
  including outcomes for children, families, staff, and programs;and
  • Guidance for using evaluation data for improving programs and communicating outcomes.

The Toolkit is available at:  http://www.rtc.pdx.edu/pgECMHCToolKit.shtml

Developed collaboratively by:

Georgetown University, National Technical Assistance Center for Children’s Mental Health
http://gucchd.georgetown.edu/programs/ta_center/index.html

Johns Hopkins University, Women’s and Children’s Health PolicyCenter
http://www.jhsph.edu/wchpc/

Portland State University, Research and Training Center on Family Support and Children’s Mental Health
http://www.rtc.pdx.edu/

Presentations:

• Mental Health Consultation: Positive Partnerships with Diverse Rural & Urban Programs. Presented at the NASW-OR Conference, Portland, OR. (March, 2008)
• Building Capacity of Community-Based Preschool Programs: The Process and Outcomes of an Organizational-Level Intervention. Paper presented at the 21st Annual Research Conference: A System of Care for Children's Mental Health: Expanding the Research Base. Tampa, FL. (February, 2008)
  
• Supporting Children and Families in the Transition to Kindergarten: Transforming Transitions to Kindergarten. Presented at the 12th Annual Northwest Parenting and Family Education Conference presentation. (March, 2006)
• Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation: A Logic Model Based on Theories of Change. Poster presented at the 12th Annual Northwest Parenting and Family Education Conference. (March, 2006)
• The Evidence Base for Mental Health Consultation in Early Childhood Settings: Research Synthesis Addressing Staff and Program Outcomes. Presented at the 19th Annual Research Conference, A System of Care for Children’s Mental Health: Expanding the Research Base in Tampa, Florida. (February, 2006)

Latest Updates

ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINING INTERVENTION & EVALUATION

Site A. Program staff have completed the pre-test survey instrument, participated in an initial training series as planned, and completed an examination of the early childhood mental health services currently available in the program. Data collection is on schedule using self-report survey methods as described in original application. Additional program capacity-building activities were developed, based on the results of the pre-test and the training debriefings. Staff training sessions have been designed according to identified training needs and delivered in collaboration with the program.

Site B. Research with the second site commenced ahead of schedule to accommodate the program’s planned training activities and customary scheduling practices. The initial training and the control pre-test data collection is complete, using the same procedures as Site A.

TRANSITION INTERVENTION DESIGN, PILOT IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION

Jessica Abel, an M.S.W. student from the Graduate School of Social Work, joined the project team in October 2005 as the on-site facilitator of the transition intervention for Site A. The project team is working in partnership with program staff to develop enhanced transition supports that are more suited to the needs of families in the target group. A transition planning workgroup has been initiated within the program to develop the transition intervention. A target group of families is being recruited for the intervention. Once parent consent is received, an individualized, family-driven, team-based intervention to support transition will be implemented and evaluated. A similar process will be undertaken at site B.