ECE Coalition Facilitates Mental Health Trainings to Help Providers Thrive

Throughout the pandemic, Milwaukee’s child care providers have remained steadfast in their commitment to serving Milwaukee’s families. Yet the pressure of doing so took its toll, resulting in high levels of stress, compassion fatigue and secondary trauma. Understandably, this made it more difficult to connect, empathize and communicate with the children in their care.

Milwaukee’s ECE Coalition (originally the MKE ECE Civic Response Team), which is comprised of diverse leaders from the early childhood community, saw firsthand how the pandemic was affecting these essential workers – and they knew they had to help.

“We know that what goes on in our early education spaces now will have a long-lasting impact on our community,” says Daria Hall, the ECE Director at Milwaukee Succeeds and a founding member of the Coalition. “So when early educators raised the flag about mental health needs, we sprang into action, utilizing the range of expertise across our Coalition.”

With the aid of community partners, the Coalition banded together to facilitate mental health trainings for hundreds of providers, giving them robust tools and strategies to navigate this increased stress.

From Idea to Action

Once the Coalition had recognized the need for mental health trainings, they quickly identified SaintA as an important partner and invited them into the Coalition. SaintA’s mission is to facilitate equity, learning, healing and wellness, particularly for those navigating systems of care. Together, they began developing a proposal on how SaintA could best provide trainings to early educators in eight target zip codes, prioritizing Black and Brown communities in Milwaukee.

To facilitate this work, the Coalition set about raising funds from public and philanthropic sources, ultimately receiving support via the CARES Act through the MKE Mental Health Civic Response Team and from the MKE Responds Fund through the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. With the resources in place, SaintA began the real work: teaching providers how to navigate trauma and stress so they could adequately support the children in their care.

The Trainings

The first trainings, delivered in late 2020, reached 150 Milwaukee providers. They focused on SaintA’s Compassion Curve model, which highlights the need to increase compassion for ourselves and others, and the Seven Essential Ingredients for Trauma Informed Care.

Sara Daniel, SaintA’s Vice President of Educational Services, explains, “Our primary focus became co-regulation – how we regulate ourselves as adults and how we moderate our stress. Because dysregulated adults are not able to regulate the children in our care.”

According to survey data from participants, after the trainings educators felt far more comfortable responding to trauma-related behaviors and better understood how adverse childhood experiences influence development and learning. They were also able to identify their role in the escalation process and steps they could use to support students who are escalating.

Based on this positive feedback, the offerings were expanded in partnership with 4 C for Children. Additional training was offered on the Stress Response and Effective Regulation Strategies, which helped participants recognize toxic stress and its impact on the brain and body.

These trainings began virtually in July 2021, followed by an in-person event in August. They were accompanied by carefully curated resources and materials that supported participants in applying what they learned, including age-appropriate sensory and regulatory tools.

4C for Children helped make these trainings accessible in Spanish and Hmong so more Milwaukee educators could be trained. Thanks in part to their help, these sessions will ultimately reach 200 educators, providing support to these vital individuals so they can better support the students who need them.

Next Steps

This journey isn’t over yet! The Coalition aims to expand the reach of the trainings to more early educators, hoping to serve another 150 providers over the course of 2022. They’re also helping to facilitate aligned training to parents of young children, which will occur this fall during parent events in the community.

“If we create widespread awareness about these concepts,” says Daniel, “we believe that, in partnership, parents, caregivers and early childcare educators can develop innovative, healing practices to build healthy brains for all children in our community.”

According to Hall, this training is an example of the ECE Coalition’s commitment to collectively responding to the needs identified by caregivers and educators. To discover more examples of their work in the early childhood sector, click here.