Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation

About the ECMHC Program

We all have mental health–even babies! Children’s mental health is critical to their overall health. It is normal to have concerns and questions about children’s behavior and development or need support as you care for young children. Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation is a prevention service provided at no-cost to early childhood professionals and caregivers caring for young children birth through age 5. Our services promote the healthy social and emotional development of children, the wellbeing of caregivers and high quality care in early learning environments.

ECPAC staff leading this effort: Karla Wedel – Karla@ecpac.org or 303-882-1596.

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Who Can Participate?

Our mental health consultants can partner with any adult in Adams County who is caring for a young child (birth thru five years old). Services available at no-cost to:

Parents/Guardians
Early Childhood Educators
Early Childhood Directors/Administrators

How is ECMHC conducted?

View our info flyers.

Site Visits, Observation & Reflective Assessments

We can help you learn more about social emotional strengths, needs and challenges of individual children, classroom groups and early childhood programs.

Goal Setting, Strategy Recommendations & Tools

We can help support healthy social emotional skill building, reduce challenging behaviors and increase adult capacity.

Training, Workshops & Reflective Groups

We can help adults reflect on caregiving beliefs and practices, explore teaching and parenting tools and foster adult connections.

Resources & Community Referrals

We can help children, families and early childhood systems identify and connect to additional services when needed.

ECPAC provides support to early care and education programs, families, and other organizations through the Nurturing Connections Colorado program.

What is Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation?

Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation empowers parents and early childhood professionals to create environments and strengthen relationships that foster healthy social-emotional development for children 0-6.

ECMHC can be provided for early care & education where all staff & children benefit in a home, classroom, or program.

ECMHC can be provided to support caregivers develop approaches to support individual children who may be having a difficult time in their childcare/preschool setting.

Find out more about ECMHC: Read Frequently Asked Questions. Prefer to watch a video? English; Spanish

Want to know what to expect?

To make a referral for either program or child-specific consultation contact: Call the ECMH Support Line at 303.866.4202 or complete the online referral form.

Video for families (with Spanish sub-titles).

ECPAC’s ECMHC Community Brief explains how we’re working to support early childhood mental health.

Social Emotional Development

Children’s social-emotional development is critical for a strong foundation for school readiness and for life long healthy relationships and problem solving skills. Like all areas of development and skills, social-emotional skills must be taught and nurtured.

Learning these skills takes time and is best supported within a healthy relationship with caregivers. Children’s social-emotional development is one of the five protective factors in preventing child abuse and neglect.

Learn about how you can support children’s social emotional development as well as for brochures for families.

Additional resources are available from the Office of Early Childhood.

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*Note:We are a consultation service, focused on helping adults implement foundational social emotional tools to support young children. We do not provide direct therapy or behavioral intervention, diagnoses, medication or clinical evaluations.