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State grant funds additional early childhood professionals
More children are expelled from preschools in Ohio for mental health and behavioral reasons than in grades kindergarten through 12th combined.
“Hard to believe, but true,” said Joe Shorokey, chief executive officer of D&E Counseling Center, which recently received a $374,604 grant to strengthen early childhood mental-health services for children and their families in Columbiana, Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
Shorokey said data from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services denotes the problem, which is not exclusive to Ohio but is national. The Yale University Child Study Center reported the prekindergarten expulsion rate is 3.2 times the rate for K-12 students, he said.
As a result, there is a high demand for services for preschools across the state, Shorokey said.
Through a tri-county collaborative between D&E, lead and fiscal agent for the grant, the Trumbull County Mental Health and Recovery Board and the Counseling Center of Columbiana County, the grant will provide funds for Early Childhood Mental Health Workforce expansion.
Shorokey said full-time early childhood mental-health consultants will be employed for Mahoning County’s D&E and Columbiana County’s CCCC. There will be expansion of early childhood mental-health consultation in Trumbull County through its mental-health board’s personnel who provide this service: PsyCare, Valley Counseling and Homes for Kids.
The ECMHCs are trained and certified through the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, Shorokey said.
First-year funds have been awarded with which to hire early-childhood mental-health consultants and six statewide master trainers to provide highly specialized training to preschool programs and teachers to promote positive social-emotional development in young children.
The master trainers are in place, including one hired by D&E to provide training in a six-county region in northeast Ohio. In addition, D&E is interviewing and hiring early-childhood mental-health consultants and expects to begin reaching out to preschools and early-childhood care centers within in the next few weeks, Shorokey said.
The service will be widely available to preschool programs throughout the tri-county area. Parents of children in the programs served also will have access to the ECMHCs; and children may be referred by programs and teachers, he said.
The grant period is for the balance of the current fiscal year, ending June 30, 2016, and for fiscal 2017 beginning July 1, 2016, and ending June 30, 2017.
The grant for Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties’ mental-health organizations is among $7,633,811 distributed to 75 of Ohio’s counties by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
That total does not include $375,000 for workforce development, training and infrastructure; $220,000 for the centralized intake component, and $871,582 designated for the Race to the Top Early Childhood Mental Health initiatives, bringing the total to $9.1 million.
The grants are an effort to promote healthy social and emotional development and school readiness among children 6 and under through the agency’s “Whole Child Matters: Early Childhood Mental Health Initiative,” said Tracy Plouck, director of OhioMHAS.
The funding calls for the addition of up to 64 mental-health consultants who will work with teachers, staff and families of at-risk children in preschools and other early-learning settings.