New collaboration announced to address early childhood mental health in New York City

Thanks to new grant funding from Robin Hood, the Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) is pleased to announce a new collaboration with University Settlement, a social justice and human services agency that serves more than 40,000 people across Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn every year.

Robin Hood, New York City’s largest local poverty-fighting philanthropy, made a major $650,000 investment in University Settlement’s Butterflies early childhood mental health program, which was established in 2006 to offer integrated social-emotional and mental health supports to families with children under five who have experienced extreme stresses, trauma, and mental health challenges.

As part of the grant, Butterflies will collaborate with the YCSC to integrate the Climate of Healthy Interactions for Learning & Development (CHILD) tool into its operations, where it will be administered routinely throughout the program year to classroom teaching staff in early childhood center-based programs.

The CHILD tool supports children’s social-emotional health by measuring the classroom environment holistically, assessing data points including the staff members’ emotional states, children’s behaviors, and classroom interactions. The tool will be used to enhance the quality of the social-emotional environment of center-based programs for teachers, parents, and children.

Butterflies will rapidly expand its current services through the grant, while also establishing a robust Medicaid billing infrastructure that will ensure the program’s long-term financial sustainability and make many of its services more readily accessible to families.

“We are grateful to Robin Hood for its longstanding commitment to our work, and for this latest and largest investment in our teams,” said Melissa Aase, CEO of University Settlement. “And we are thrilled about the opportunity to collaborate with the Yale Child Study Center to implement the CHILD tool – we believe that together we’re building a new best practice for understanding and productively supporting young children’s mental health.”

Chin Reyes, YCSC assistant professor and director of the CHILD program, added, “We have seen in early childhood programming that the settlement house model continues evolving to ensure the most effective and human community-based solutions to poverty. Integrating mental healthcare into classrooms makes a real difference in the well-being of people and communities, and we are very excited to partner with University Settlement to further establish the case for broad-based investments in this vital pillar of community wellness.”