Celebrating Mental Health Services at Izzi

Written by Marketing Intern Jonathan Oei and Mental Health Coordinator Sunshine Wu Fisher

—-

Happy end of May and Mental Awareness Month! We proudly celebrate the importance of mental health and the services we provide for our children, their families, and our staff.

Here at Izzi, we partner with StarVista and Family Connections to have mental health consultant at every site and program option that regularly supports our children, families, and staff. The consultant visits sites at least twice a month to observe children in the classroom and holds mental health meetings at least once a month to help staff address children's developmental and/or mental health concerns.

For our homebased and family child care programs, the consultant holds monthly meetings with staff but does not conduct regular observations. Aside from supporting staff, the consultant can also obtain permission from parents to observe and consult about a particular child if needed. Our consultant can then work with both teachers and the family to explore different strategies to help the child.

For children who need more support, staff will contact our Mental Health Coordinator and submit an internal referral form (IRF-MH) to request Multi-Disciplinary Team Meeting (MDTM) support. Sunshine often recommends staff refer a child if the challenging behavior is starting to stress out teachers and peers, in terms of affecting their safety and well-being in the classroom. If staff have been talking to their consultant about the child already and the support still doesn't feel enough to meet the child's needs, Sunshine would also recommend referring the child for MDTM support. If staff aren't sure, they can always send her an email and explain what is happening, and she can let them know if it is appropriate to refer the child or not.

1. Once Sunshine receives the IRF-MH form, she arranges an observation of the child.

2. She then sets up the MDTM-Staff meeting, where the staff team, the consultant, and relevant managers meet together to create a behavior support plan to help the child at school. When appropriate, others working with the child (e.g. speech therapist, special educator, mental health clinician, or pediatrician) may also be invited to the meeting.

3. After this meeting, we meet with the parents (MDTM-Parent meeting) to share the behavior support plan, obtain parent input, and also collaborate to try similar strategies at home with the child.

Through the MDTM process, Sunshine can also bring in an Occupational Therapist to consult about sensory strategies to help the child. A board-certified Behavior Consultant is also available to consult if the child is exhibiting extreme behaviors. In this way, teachers are not alone in figuring out how to best work with a child who’s struggling at school.

There is a whole support team to help recommend strategies, provide specialized materials, encourage parents to seek further evaluation when appropriate and connect them with early intervention services and/or parent-child therapy as needed.

As for our staff here at Izzi, we have an active Wellness Committee that’s made up of representatives from every site and program option that meets every other month to discuss ways we can best support our Izzi staff. The Wellness Committee provides feedback regarding possible agency policy changes, organizes staff treats and wellness activities, and also brings attention to particular staff needs and challenges as they arise. Some examples of fun activities include a gourmet coffee cart service for our staff to show appreciation, free breakfast or lunch delivered on-site, health challenges like our annual walk-a-thon, and other agency challenges to help our staff get engaged.

Top walkathon winners from 2024!

Izzi also gives all staff a voice and the opportunity to provide direct feedback through the virtual feedback box that is embedded in our weekly Friday message board email. We conduct an annual staff satisfaction survey where staff let us know their thoughts and suggestions about all the different types of support they receive at Izzi.

We acknowledge that teaching in the field of early childhood is challenging and we want to listen and provide the best support to our staff and to our families.

Thank you Sunshine Wu Fisher for helping highlight our Mental Health Services here at Izzi!