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The California-based La Maida Project announced this month that it is working with Save the Children to build and implement a training network that will support rural early- childhood educators and their youngest learners. By taking an ecological approach to mental health, the partnership seeks to help both the children and their caregivers.
La Maida Project is a nonprofit that works to help organizations incorporate an ecological approach to mental health for both teams and those they serve, said Lynn Knox, the executive director of La Maida. Her organization wants caregivers to understand that they need to help themselves first in order to be able to help the children.
Marilyn Farrell, senior advisor for mental health for Save the Children’s Head Start programs, said an ecological approach is one that looks at all the aspects of the environment a child is in, from their relationships to their community, to support their mental health.
“We understand how stressors impact children’s learning, their health, their well-being,” Farrell said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “But the stresses also impact the adults that care for them, so we have to look at it in that ecological lens – the relationships that are happening between the adults and the children that are really going to support children’s mental health.”
Save the Children, a child advocacy nonprofit that focuses on children’s rights, works to get children ready for kindergarten and to read by third grade, especially those children in rural communities. Through its early education programs and Head Start in rural communities in Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee, Save the Children will work with La Maida to instruct 25 of its trainers on La Maida’s ecological approach.
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Nearly 70% of the mental health professional shortage areas, or HPSAs, are located in communities that are either rural or partially rural, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Health Resources and Services Administration. Statistics show that of the 6,418 mental health HPSAs in the U.S., 3,995, or 62.25%, are rural, and another 378 (about 6%) are partially rural.
Research published by the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science in 2020 found that as many as 65% of nonmetropolitan counties do not have psychiatrists.
“We partner with organizations like Save the Children to make sure that their staff has the training and the tools necessary to self-regulate and go into their work feeling good, and that will translate into the care that they give their communities,” Knox said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.
“We know that burnout and turnover are high in social service organizations and with frontline workers, so being able to support them allows us to then support the communities through that connection and through those healthy relationships.”
The work helps mental health professionals deal with their own stresses so they can better help those they care for, she said.
“Our experiential training allows our participants to understand how the body processes trauma and how the health formula leads to positive well-being,” she said. “We introduce somatic practices and communal practices to help them self and co-regulate, resetting the nervous system and allowing for authentic connections. We examine how the body processes and reacts to stress and trauma and learn how to hold meaningful conversations about our stories that lead to sharing of life experiences and communal healing… Finally, we provide our participants with the tools and resources to teach these proven effective concepts with constituents of varied ages and experience levels to make the ideas approachable and effective.”
By partnering with organizations like Save the Children, she said, they are able to provide training and education for their workforce that strengthens workforce relationships and benefits the well-being of both the staff and the communities in which they work.
Those trainers will then instruct more Save the Children program educators in nearly 55 counties about how to better handle things such as stress management skills and well-being for themselves, and the children and families they serve. The trainers will also work with educators to build a culture of well-being, Farrell said.
Training mental health professionals will ultimately help children in those rural areas, she said.
“We know the impact that stress and trauma have on children. It impacts their learning; their health; their emotional, and social development; their brain development,” Farrell said. “We know that it is also based on the health of the adults that are caring for the children. We’re providing those buffers, those protective factors, that ease the negative effects of that stress and trauma have on children.”
The program will also help address early education workforce issues in rural communities, according to Karen Harrison, managing director for Save the Children’s Career and Education Workforce Development team.
“We know that there’s such significant workforce issues in rural communities for both early childhood and school age professionals,” Harrison said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.
“So, we are really working to strengthen the capacity of the workforce that currently exists because we know that there’s a shortage, and we know that there’s not a huge influx of new people moving into rural communities. We’re working with the individuals that are currently in those communities, that love their communities, that want their communities to thrive, to really strengthen the capacity that already exists.”
Although the program is new, there are signs that it’s working, Farrell said.
“We’re beginning to see staff retention, which is so critical in early childhood,” she said. “If we can retain our staff, if we can keep the continuity of care for our children and staff for children’s families, that’s going to be so impactful.”
That impact will have a ripple effect, she said, as communities feel more supported, staff feels like they are able to do their job.
The program is privately funded, organizers said, meaning it does not rely on federal funding and is not in danger of losing grants due to changes in the administration.
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by Liz Carey, The Daily Yonder
June 9, 2025
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