Mental Health
Head Start and Early Head Start programs support the mental health of children, families, and staff every day. Early childhood mental health is the same as social and emotional well-being.
Head Start and Early Head Start programs support the mental health of children, families, and staff every day. Early childhood mental health is the same as social and emotional well-being. It is a child’s developing capacity to express and regulate emotions, form trusting relationships, explore, and learn—all in the cultural context of family and community. The mental health of children and the adults that care for them is essential for school readiness.
Head Start and Early Head Start programs support the mental health of children, families, and staff every day. Early childhood mental health is the same as social and emotional well-being.
Ongoing research continues to show us how adversity and toxic stress in early childhood can have a negative impact throughout a person's life. These videos are designed to help them understand what toxic stress is, what it does to a person, and easy things to do to help prevent it.
These short videos provide examples of how to use MI strategies in everyday conversations between staff and families. Staff can use these videos to identify skills to enhance their relationships with families.
Share these posters with families to help them identify daily routines and learn how to increase positive social and emotional support throughout the day.
All young children benefit when their caregivers are healthy and not too stressed or depressed. Explore practical tools to help caregivers build positive relationships with their infants, toddlers, and preschoolers and reduce stress.
Use these posters to support families with infants. Share tips for how parents can support infants' social and emotional development.
Use these posters to support families with toddlers. Share these tips for how parents can to help them support toddlers' social and emotional development.
This resource offers data to support the importance of investing in early childhood mental health consultation. Programs may use the resources in this tool kit as a guide in designing and implementing effective mental health services for families.
This tool supports parents and caregivers in understanding temperament. Discover simple best practice tips adults can use to foster the unique temperament of each child.
Explore Family Connections, a preventive, systemwide mental health consultation and training approach to strengthen the capacity of Early Head Start and Head Start staff. Staff can use these resources in working with families dealing with parental depression and related adversities.