Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (Birth to 5)

ABC - Infant targets several key issues that have been identified as problematic among children who have experienced early maltreatment and/or disruptions in care. These young children often behave in ways that push caregivers away. The first intervention component helps caregivers to re-interpret children's behavioral signals so that they provide nurturance even when it is not elicited. Nurturance does not come naturally to many caregivers, but children who have experienced early adversity especially need nurturing care. Thus, the intervention helps caregivers provide nurturing care even if it does not come naturally. Second, many children who have experienced early adversity are dysregulated behaviorally and biologically. The second intervention component helps caregivers provide a responsive, predictable, warm environment that enhances young children's behavioral and regulatory capabilities. The intervention helps caregivers follow their children's lead with delight. The third intervention component helps caregivers decrease behaviors that could be overwhelming or frightening to a young child.

Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up - Early Childhood (ABC-EC), with a target population of caregivers of young children ages 2 through 4 who have experienced early adversity or are demonstrating socioemotional or behavioral concerns, is rated separately on this website.

CPP is a treatment for young children aged 0-5 who have experienced a traumatic event and/or are experiencing mental health, attachment, and/or behavioral challenges. Typically, the child is seen with their primary caregiver in a dyadic format. CPP examines ways that the caregiver-child relationship and the child’s developmental trajectory may be affected by: 1) the child’s trauma history, 2) caregiver’s trauma history, 3) caregiver’s relational history, 4) contextual factors including culture, socioeconomic status, sociocultural trauma, and immigration experience. Targets of the intervention include caregivers’ and children’s maladaptive representations of themselves and each other along with interactions and behaviors that interfere with the child’s mental health and the emotion regulation capacities of both child and caregiver. For children exposed to trauma, caregiver and child are guided to create a joint narrative of the traumatic event and to identify and address traumatic triggers that generate dysregulated behaviors and affect.

Promoting First Relationships (PFR) is a manualized home visiting intervention/prevention program which includes parent training components based on strengths-based practice, practical, and in-depth strategies for promoting secure and healthy relationships between caregivers and young children (birth to 5 years). Features of PFR include:

• Video recording caregiver–child interactions to provide insight into real-life situations and help the caregiver reflect on the underlying needs of the child and how those needs impact behavior
• Giving positive and instructive feedback that builds caregivers' competence with and commitment to their children
• Focusing on the deeper emotional feelings and needs underlying children's distress and behaviors
• Using handouts and homework to enhance parent insight and learning about child social and emotional development, needs, and concerns

Reminiscing and Emotion Training (RET) is a brief, relational intervention designed to improve the caregiver-child relationship, improve caregiver emotion socialization, and to facilitate healthy development among children (aged 3-6 years) who have experienced, or who are at risk for, child maltreatment. Relational interventions aim to address the adverse consequences of maltreatment and prevent future maltreatment through the enhancement of the caregiver-child relationship. RET is designed to shift parents of young children towards sensitive parenting which emphasizes verbal interactions, including supportive guidance during discussion of children’s emotions.

RET includes 6 home visiting sessions for parents and children, teaches parents skills and strategies for improving parent-child communication and reminiscing, and includes caregiver-child activities to support emotion socialization. Features include videorecording of caregiver–child reminiscing to practice skills and enhance caregiver insight, focusing on positive feedback to highlight positive moments and build caregiver competence and motivation in emotion socialization, and introducing simple emotion-focused parent–child activities.

Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up – Early Childhood (ABC-EC), developed for children ages 2 through 4, targets several key issues that have been identified as problematic among children who have experienced adversity and/or demonstrate socioemotional or behavioral concerns. These young children often behave in ways that push caregivers away. The first intervention component is designed to help caregivers reinterpret children’s behavioral signals so that they provide nurturance even when it is not elicited. Nurturance does not come naturally to many caregivers, but children who have experienced adversity especially need nurturing care. Thus, the intervention aims to help caregivers provide nurturing care even if it does not come naturally. Second, many children who have experienced adversity are dysregulated behaviorally and biologically. The second intervention component is designed to help caregivers provide a responsive, predictable, warm environment that enhances young children’s behavioral and regulatory capabilities. The intervention aims to help caregivers follow their children’s lead with delight. The third intervention component is designed to help caregivers implement calming strategies and be present psychologically and physically when their child is dysregulated.

Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up – Infant (ABC-I) is rated separately on this website.

Child First is a two-generation, home-based mental health intervention for the most vulnerable young children (prenatal through age five years) and their families, who likely have current or past Child Welfare Services involvement. It is designed for young children who have usually experienced trauma and/or have social-emotional, behavioral, developmental, and/or learning problems. Most live in environments where there is violence, neglect, mental illness, substance abuse, or homelessness. The goals of Child First are to help them heal from the effects of trauma and adversity; improve child and parent mental health; improve child development; and reduce abuse and neglect.

The model uses two team members:

• A Clinician provides a psychotherapeutic, two-generation intervention designed to build a nurturing, responsive, protective parent-child relationship, fostering the child's cognitive and social-emotional development and improving parent mental health.
• A Care Coordinator facilitates connections to broad community-based services and supports for all family members with the aim of achieving family stabilization, decreased parental stress, and improved executive functioning.

The goal of Group Attachment Based Intervention (GABI) is to meet the needs of parents with very young children who expressed the desire to be a different kind of parent than the parent who raised them. GABI was developed to meet that need by bringing together groups of parents who are socially isolated and affected by disparities across multiple systems of care. GABI is designed to help parents manage stress, increase their social support network, foster secure attachment, and improve parent-child relationships. GABI was developed for parents who have experienced significant trauma, who have mental health challenges, and/or experienced removal of a child.

Mellow Babies consists of 14-week long postnatal group programs for moms and dads, with gender-specific sessions for moms and dads run separately. They run for one full day a week. Mellow Babies groups include personal development for the parents, including addressing past and current relationship difficulties and topics such as depression, self-esteem, and domestic violence. Over a shared lunch and joint activity with the babies or children, parents learn how to interact enjoyably with their babies. The third part of the day is a parenting workshop that uses the parents' own video-taped interaction their children to identify and enhance positive interaction. These activities are followed up in "HAVE A GO" home tasks.

Babies are cared for in high quality babies groups during the morning and afternoon parent groups, joining their parents for lunch, and play activities. During these groups, there will be activities the child care leaders do with the babies that match the theme of what the parents are learning about in their group. The lunchtime activities are designed to enhance engagement and enjoyment between parent and child and to introduce a repertoire of fun activities which are free or low cost and which parents may never have tried before, but parents can try out for themselves at home.

Mom Power®: A Strong Roots™ Curriculum is an integrated mental health and attachment-based parenting program that incorporates a manualized intervention delivered by 2 facilitators across 13-sessions (3 individual and 10 group sessions), with corresponding parent- and child-group curricula. Mom Power® is intended for, but not limited to, mothers with young children (ages 0-6) and histories of adversity and/or trauma who may also present with depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress, and/or high levels of distress. Mom Power® utilizes a multigenerational approach and applies attachment theory, cognitive-behavioral and dialectical behavioral strategies to facilitate growth and new skills. The group format is designed to facilitate social support, and the nurturing environment and individual sessions are designed to enhance access to care. The program seeks to nurture resilience through strengthening protective factors, improving mental health, and promoting sensitivity and responsive parenting. Although the CEBC has not yet reviewed these, there are adaptations of the Mom Power® curriculum specifically tailored for military families, fathers, and families involved in the child welfare system.

Mothering from the Inside Out (MIO) is a brief individual parenting intervention developed as an adjunct to substance use treatment. MIO primarily targets parental reflective functioning in caregivers with children under 5 years of age. MIO is provided by counselors who are trained to help them engage in a process of mentalizing (i.e., making sense of strong emotions that arise during stressful interpersonal interactions that may be interfering with the ability to keep their child’s emotional needs in mind). MIO encourages caregivers to first make sense of their own strong reactions before attuning to their child’s emotional states. This technique helps ensure that stressed caregivers can accurately make sense of their children’s emotional cues without heightening their own stress response. The caregiver’s capacity to recognize her child’s emotional cues, in turn, promotes the child’s use of the caregiver as an attachment figure, strengthening the child’s attachment security.

The Early Childhood Consultation Partnership® (ECCP®) program takes a strengths-based approach to Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC). The ECCP® Consultant (subcontracted from nonprofit child behavioral health agencies by Advanced Behavioral Health, Inc. (ABH), who also provides training and ongoing supervision) engages in a collaborative relationship with the consultees and seeks to help strengthen the adult partnerships. The ECCP® Consultant uses a combination of interviewing, screening/assessment tools, and observation to co-create an Action Plan, and then provides the adult caregivers with real time, onsite support to help the adult caregivers implement the strategies outlined in the Action Plan. There are three levels of service: Child/Family, Classroom, and Program Wide Consultation. The ECCP® Consultant also provides Social Emotional Trainings, facilitates Mental Health Consultation Groups, and is a member of Early Childhood Community Collaborative groups.

The Michigan Model of Infant Mental Health Home Visiting (IMH-HV) is a needs-driven, relationship-focused intervention for parents and infants/toddlers aged 0 (pregnancy) to 36 months. IMH-HV aims to meet the needs of families at risk for relationship problems, child abuse and/or neglect, and behavioral health concerns. Families are eligible for IMH-HV if either the parent or child have concerns that make them more susceptible to disruptions in the parent-child relationship (e.g., parent mental health, child social-emotional and regulatory concerns). IMH-HV is delivered weekly in families’ homes by Master’s-level providers. Through a multifaceted approach, IMH-HV aims to increase parental competencies, promote mental health and sensitive caregiving, and thus reduce risk for the infant/toddler and lessen the probability of intergenerational transmission of the effects of unresolved loss and trauma in parents.

Theraplay is a structured play therapy for children and their parents. Its goal is to enhance attachment, self-esteem, trust in others, and joyful engagement. The sessions are designed to be fun, physical, personal, and interactive and replicate the natural, healthy interactions between parents and young children. Children have been referred for a wide variety of problems including withdrawn or depressed behavior, overactive-aggressive behavior, temper tantrums, phobias, and difficulty socializing and making friends. Children also are referred for various behavior and interpersonal problems resulting from learning disabilities, developmental delays, and pervasive developmental disorders. Because of its focus on attachment and relationship development, Theraplay has been used for many years with foster and adoptive families.

WWW is aimed at parents and their children who are experiencing relational and developmental difficulties. It was designed for children 0 to 4 years of age, but has been used with older children. The focus of the approach is on strengthening the attachment relationship between caregiver and child, in order to improve the child's self-regulating abilities and sense of efficacy and enhance the caregiver's sensitivity. A unique feature of the approach is the use of infant-led play sessions in which mothers are encouraged to observe their infants and allow them to initiate activities.