Healthy Development of Children in U.S. Immigrant and Refugee Families Would Benefit from Better Access to Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Services

WASHINGTON, DC – Infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) services can play an important part in supporting young children’s well-being and development. For young children in immigrant and refugee families, who make up about one-fourth of all U.S. children ages 0–5, mental health supports can be particularly impactful given stressors related to migration and acculturation as well as the fact that some have experienced trauma.

Yet during what is a critical developmental period for young children, immigrant and refugee families often lack access to IECMH services that can boost their child’s capacity to successfully and healthily form relationships, experience emotions, explore their environment and learn—all of which contribute to long-term well-being into adult life.

An issue brief out today from the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy outlines the limited access to IECMH services that immigrant and refugee families can face, examining the importance of such services and key barriers. The brief identifies opportunities for policymakers and practitioners to improve access to these services for young children in immigrant and refugee families.

Among the structural barriers to access: Young refugee children are not assessed for mental health needs during the refugee resettlement process, reduced insurance coverage rates may mean that many young children in immigrant households are not getting regular pediatric visits where screenings could occur and families are not enrolled in preventative services such as early learning or home visiting. IECMH service providers also are less likely to be promoting their services to such families given cultural and language barriers, and the screening tools and treatments they use are not always translated into other languages or developed in culturally relevant ways.

To address these gaps, the authors offer a number of recommendations, including:

• Establishing standardized mental health screenings for refugee children and youth, including those under the age of 5. The Office of Refugee Resettlement and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could develop joint guidance in this area.
• Improving the accessibility of IECMH consultations by broadening policy and funding parameters to include consultations from mental health experts in family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) care settings. A large proportion of immigrant families rely on FFN care instead of center-based early childhood programs.
• Using assessment tools that have been translated and validated for use with diverse cultural and linguistic groups by health care, early childhood and other service providers.
• Tailoring home visiting programs to include an IECMH focus, as with the Baby TALK model being used in Illinois.

“Prioritizing the accessibility and relevance of IECMH services for these families is imperative for both ensuring the healthy socioemotional development of their young children and promoting the resilience of the communities in which they live,” analysts Maki Park, Lillie Hinkle, Katherine Habben and Emma Heidorn write.

Read the issue brief, Supporting Immigrant and Refugee Families through Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Services, here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/infant-early-childhood-mental-health.

And for more of the Center's work on early childhood education and care, visit: www.migrationpolicy.org/topics/early-childhood-education-and-care.