Promoting Community Impact in Caregiver, Infant, and Early Childhood Mental Health Research

During the early childhood period, marginalized families are at highest risk for developing mental health difficulties and face the greatest challenges in accessing mental health services (Klawetter & Frankel, 2018). Social workers make up the largest proportion of the infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) workforce in the United States and are important advocates for increasing access to services and decolonizing research practices (Walsh et al., 2021). As such, social workers have the opportunity to lead the IECMH field in conducting research that creates real-world change for marginalized families. Mental health concerns are increasingly impacting caregivers of young children, which can then affect parenting and child well-being (Izett et al., 2021). Early childhood is also the most vulnerable time in development and the most effective and cost-effective time to intervene to promote child mental health (Oppenheim & Bartlett, 2024). If left unaddressed, mental health concerns that develop in early childhood can have lasting impacts on cognitive, physical, and social development (Izett et al., 2021). This roundtable will create dialogue among participants about community-engaged caregiver, infant, and early childhood mental health research and related changes in practice and policy. The scholars participating in this roundtable are from different service sectors, institutions, and areas of the country. They conduct research that seeks to impact clinical practice, programs, and policies in child and family mental health across settings like Head Start, Healthy Start, public health, health care, home visiting, substance use treatment, and behavioral health. Presenters will discuss research-community partnerships that collectively focus on health equity, supporting maternal mental health and well-being, promoting healthy attachment between young children and caregivers, and providing integrated services for caregivers of young children with substance use disorders. Each will discuss how they developed long-standing, collaborative research partnerships, how they center lived experience in research, and how their research has impacted individuals, families, organizations, and/or communities. The first presenter will discuss an ongoing agency-researcher partnership to test and implement BRIGHT, an attachment-based intervention for women with substance use disorders and their young children, and how this led to changes in clinical practice. The second presenter will discuss how the results of a large-scale RCT of the Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC) program are being leveraged to scale ABC in the community. A third presenter will discuss how a study with the Parents as Teachers national home visiting program informed how home visitors were trained to support mothers experiencing depression. A fourth presenter will discuss how results from a qualitive study of clinicians, parents, and community members informed changes to an online learning center for the Parent-Child Care intervention, which seeks to improve caregiver-child relationships in the context of early trauma. A fifth presenter will discuss an ongoing community-based participatory research partnership in a majority-minority rural community focused on maternal emotional health and wellbeing and health equity for rural mothers and children. This roundtable will also invite audience discussion regarding collaborative approaches in social work research and how lessons learned can promote cross-sector changes to support marginalized families.