Child First

• Intended Audience: Children are eligible for referrals if they display emotional/behavioral or developmental/learning difficulties, have been exposed to or impacted by trauma, or are from a family facing multiple challenges (such as substance use, homelessness, or parental mental illness). No formal screening is required.
• Psychotherapeutic, Two-Generation Home Visits: Helps build a nurturing, responsive, parent-child relationship to protect the child’s developing brain from the damage of chronic stress, heals the effects of trauma and adversity for both child and parent/caregiver, and promotes strong emotional health and cognitive growth.
• Care Coordination: Provides hands-on connection to broad community-based services and supports for all family members, partnering with the family to work through immediate, severe challenges, decrease stress, and utilize growth-enhancing community resources.
• Infant and Early Childhood Community Collaborative: Implementers must participate in an Infant and Early Childhood Community Collaborative (IECCC) to enhance and integrate services for infants, young children, and their families, along a continuum from promotion to prevention to intervention.

English, Spanish

In-person home visits.

During the first month (assessment period), families are visited twice per week. After the first month, visits are conducted at least once per week (more frequent visits as needed). On average, visits last 60 minutes. Services continue for 6-12 months on average.

Materials: Necessary materials include laptops; Wi-Fi for remote work; toys for sessions (lists of recommended toys for clinicians and FRPs are provided by Child First); and portable video cameras, tripods and other accessories for video intervention. Additionally, some standardized assessments will need to be purchased ongoingly. 

Space: The supervisor and team must have access to an office space to conduct individual, team, and group supervision.

Other: A group of community stakeholders identify a lead organization and affiliated agencies to provide community support.

Typically, affiliate sites implement a minimum of 4 Child First teams. For every 4 Child First teams (each with 1 Clinician and 1 Care Coordinator), there must be 1 Child First Clinical Supervisor. Each Child First team serves approximately 8-16 families and conducts roughly 8-10 visits per week. Clinical Supervisors, Care Coordinators, and Clinicians must be full-time, in-house members of the Child First program and employed by the contracted Child First provider.

• The Clinician must be a Master’s level or higher mental health clinician and hold a license or be associate licensed as an LCSW, LPC, or LMFT.
• The Care Coordinator must hold a Bachelor’s degree or higher in child development, psychology, nursing, human services, or a related field. The Care Coordinator supports families in meeting their immediate needs, connects families with resources in the community and supports caregiver executive functioning. 
• The Clinical Supervisor must be a licensed mental health clinician with a master’s or doctoral degree in social work, psychology, APRN-child psychiatry, marriage and family therapy, or a related field. They must have a minimum of five (5) years’ experience working psychotherapeutically with young children (0-5) and their families using a relationally based model; specific experience with dyadic parent-child psychotherapy, preferred. Clinical Supervisis must also have a minimum of three (3) years’ experience conducting reflective supervision with licensed mental health clinicians, preferred. Preferably, supervisors will have a minimum of 3 years’ experience conducting reflective supervision with licensed mental health clinicians. 

It is recommended that the Child First team members be representative of the diverse community populations they serve in terms of ethnicity and language.

Each affiliate site must participate in an Infant and Early Childhood Community Collaborative (IECCC). The goal of the collaborative is to determine how best to enhance and integrate services for infants, young children, and their families, along a continuum from promotion to prevention to intervention. This group should represent a wide array of providers, community members, stakeholders, and caregivers in the catchment area of the affiliate site.

NCPC strongly recommends staff receive training in the Standards of Quality for Family Support and Strengthening. Contact Positive Childhood Alliance North Carolina (PCANC) or National Family Support Network (NFSN) for more information, training, and certification. 

Training is available for staff both in-person and through live virtual sessions. A Learning Collaborative is used during initial start-up and provided by existing members of Child First’s National Program Office Clinical Training Team. This program lasts 6-8 months. Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) is taught by a certified CPP trainer during the Learning Collaborative. Child First offers a Staff Accelerated Training program for new staff members at an existing Child First agency. In addition, all staff engage in a series of online, self-paced training courses.