Brandy L. Clarke

Research Findings: One in 5 preschool-aged children (under age 5) have a serious mental health difficulty that can have lasting negative effects. Most children under age 5 (63%) attended preschool, day care centers, Head Start, or another prekindergarten program. This leaves early childhood programs well-positioned to support the wellbeing of our earliest learners if they could offer gold standard multi-tiered systems of support for mental health care. However, there is not currently a measure for preschool teams to self-assess and improve their school mental health quality. To address this gap, we adapted an existing measure of school mental health quality for K-12 schools to preschools. Measure development included initial modifications by a preschool quality workgroup, a modified Delphi procedure including 3 rounds of data collection, and a Principal Component Analysis. The resulting measure, the School Mental Health Quality Assessment – Preschool (SMHQA-PS) consists of 46 Likert-style items covering 6 domains of preschool mental health system. Practice and Policy: This measure provides an evidence-informed tool to assist preschool mental health teams in advancing the quality of mental health supports in preschools while creating consistent language for families, school teams, researchers, and policymakers to use across school mental health programs in Pre-K-12 schools.

Latinx students are the largest ethnic minority school-age population, yet they have some of the lowest reading proficiency levels and highest rates of school dropout and experience significant unmet behavioral health needs. School-based interventions addressing behavioral challenges and parent engagement are recommended to support Latinx students. Conjoint behavioral consultation is an evidence-based intervention that supports behavioral improvements and home–school partnerships for students. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of CBC for a subsample of Latinx students enrolled in two large-scale randomized efficacy trials. ANCOVA and t-test analyses revealed generally positive effects for CBC on Latinx student and parent outcomes and parent-teacher relationships. These findings suggest CBC may be a promising school-based intervention addressing gaps in educational and behavioral health services for Latinx students. Given the small sample size, further research is needed to evaluate the efficacy of CBC for Latinx students and their families.