Early Care & Education and Mental Health Consultation

What May Be: Financing Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Services and the Child Care and Development Block Grant

In this article, the authors define ECMHC and discuss opportunities for financing its expansion. They focus on the CCDBG, which at the state level are called the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) plans. States can elect to use a portion of the CCDBG Quality Set-Aside to help finance ECMHC. State plans for the CCDBG can also be a vehicle for taking stock of the other potential funding streams, such as Medicaid, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, Head Start, and state appropriations, to support ECMHC.