Project Launch
Multnomah Education Service District
Funded Years : 2010
Project Director :
Elana Emlen
eemlen@mesd.k12.or.us
Address :
Portland,OR
Project Status : Active
Project Summary : Multnomah LAUNCH will strive to ensure that all young children ages 0–8 in Multnomah County, Oregon, will thrive by increasing services to children and improving program coordination among the community's child-serving agencies.
Multnomah County encompasses Oregon's largest city, Portland, as well as surrounding suburban and rural areas. It is the state's most populous and diverse county, housing 20 percent of the population, 25 percent of all persons of color, 60 percent of all African Americans, and 27 percent of all immigrants and refugees. In 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that approximately three-quarters of the 717,000 county residents are white/non-Latino, 10 percent are Latino, 7 percent are Asian/Pacific Islander, 6 percent are African American, and 1 percent are American Indian/Alaskan Native.
Project LAUNCH Goals
• Promote child and family wellness by building a comprehensive community planning and implementation network to coordinate child-serving systems and to integrate behavioral and physical health services for families and for children ages 0–8
• Expand and coordinate the current systems for conducting evidence-based developmental and social-emotional screenings in pediatric primary care settings and for providing evidence-based services in primary care, home visitation, and child care settings
Strategies
To achieve these goals, Multnomah LAUNCH will hire a Young Child Wellness Coordinator and establish a Young Child Wellness Council as a coordinating mechanism for all local activities. The coordinator will serve as a liaison to both the statewide Early Childhood Council and statewide Project LAUNCH activities.
The three-digit telephone number 211/Parent Helpline will continue to provide an ongoing, accessible method for anyone to find and access services, including parents, child care providers, health care providers, other community providers, and school staff. This Helpline builds system capacity by reducing the time that providers must spend identifying and securing additional resources for families and children. The Helpline's tracking feature improves accountability by ensuring that referrals to community providers either result in services or return the family to the Helpline to identify a different resource to meet the family's needs.
Multnomah LAUNCH will increase the number of pediatric primary care providers who regularly conduct developmental assessment and screening, and will work to improve coordination and communication between providers and child-serving systems. The project will use Screening Tools and Referral Training (START), a quality improvement project designed for primary care practitioners and their staff. START teaches the importance of and the science behind standardized screening; reviews the incidence of social, emotional, and developmental challenges; and introduces two developmental screening tools, ASQ and PEDS, and one relational tool, M-CHAT. Participants learn referral processes and community-based programs for the most appropriate referral for patients; successful strategies for incorporating screening into office workflow; and have an opportunity to meet and interact with representatives from community agencies. Project LAUNCH will support the development of two new START modules focused on screening children with specific risk factors related to mental health.
To promote young children's social-emotional and behavioral development, the project will support mental health consultation as a systematic approach to building the capacity of early childhood professionals and parents/caregivers.The project will implement the Center for Social Emotional Foundations for Early Learning's Pyramid Model and Positive Behavior Intervention Supports (PBIS) for in-home visiting and child care programs, resulting in significant improvements to home visiting and quality child care. Parents at these sites will be invited to join an Incredible Years (IY) group, and children identified as at risk will receive mental health and child development consultation.
A strategic communications campaign will be developed, comprising three key goals:
• Heighten community awareness of the 211/Parent Helpline
• Educate the community about the needs of very young children to be adequately screened for behavioral health concerns
• Reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues
Finally, Portland State University's Cross-Systems Training Academy will support Multnomah County's efforts by provide training and workforce development. The university will also develop a thorough, sustainable, Web-based approach to documenting professional development, which is accessible to both families and providers. This will benefit LAUNCH's efforts to integrate workforce development activities currently provided by agencies serving young children.
Expected Outcomes
• At least 50,000 children are expected to benefit from increased developmental and behavioral screenings, and 1,200 children identified as at risk will receive mental health consultation.
• Approximately 5,000 calls to the 211/Parent Helpline will be answered annually.
• At least 60 primary care pediatric providers will be trained by START, annually resulting in 15,000 screenings for more than 7,500 children (unduplicated).
• Mental health consultation, PBIS, and IY will be provided to one home visiting program and two large child care centers serving a high proportion of children experiencing risk factors for negative outcomes.
• At least 50 staff of child-serving systems will be trained to use evidence-based tools and practices, improving care for approximately 1,200 children.
• A community outreach and education campaign will reach at least 100,000 people with messages about the benefits of promoting young child wellness and available resources.
• Workforce development activities involving approximately 100 child-serving organizations will result in 1,000 staff members being trained in evidence-based practices, culturally and linguistically appropriate services, reflective supervision, and cross-system collaboration.
