At the start of this year, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) released a new incentive measure to help support health aspects of kindergarten readiness. The Social Emotional Health Metric (SEH) will focus on addressing the needs of our youth aged 0-5 and their families to have equitable access to services that support their social-emotional health and are the best match for their needs.
There are four components of the SEH Metric. It begins by assessing the service area and developing a plan to improve services. As part of the SEH Metric, OHA has provided data to guide and inform efforts and to assess the sensitivity and specificity of the metric.
On October 20th, the EOCCO Community Health Development Team gathered with community partners from our 12 county EOCCO region to present data and begin collaborating. At the virtual meeting, we had individuals representing a diverse range of local partners including: representatives from Early Learning Hubs, Department of Human Services, community mental health programs, early care and education programs, including preschool and childcare programs, local public health programs, and other community-based organizations.
We reviewed two datasets, a child-level file and an aggregate report of the metric findings to our CCO. The aggregate report looks at CCO performance on the 0-5 assessment and service measure, historically as well as during the most recent reporting period of June 2020 to July 2021. We also reviewed survey results in an effort to understand the available mental health and behavioral health services for children 0-5 and their caregivers along with asset mapping for Conscious Discipline and Triple P.
We broke out into sessions based on hub regions and had in-depth conversations regarding accessing behavioral health resources & services, barriers to accessing behavioral health resources & services, opportunities for collaboration, barriers that prevent our Hispanic/Latinx population from accessing services, ways to address barriers impacting the Hispanic/Latinx population when making a referral for BH services or when accessing services. It was exciting to hear from each of the communities and learn about the gaps and barriers families are facing and really look at how we can collaborate to help fill those gaps.
This is the beginning of many more conversations and collaboration across the EOCCO region. After gathering feedback, the CCO will finalize the asset map and will compile the feedback received from this session to develop an action plan to strengthen services for children 0-5. These steps will repeat next year, incorporating primary care into the asset map and measuring our progress on the action plan we have developed.
A recording of the data presentation is included below. If there are any questions regarding the data reviewed in the presentation or for ways to engage with this work, please contact Matthew Byrne at mbyrne@gobhi.org.