The complete series · March to August 2026

Challenging Behaviors and Beyond

Six sessions on what to do when behaviors escalate and your team is stretched thin. Every recording and every tool, free to use and free to share.

6
Sessions
14,460
Registrations
8
Free tools

Why we ran this series

Head Start programs are dealing with escalating behaviors, stretched staff, and not enough support. In our conversations with staff around the country, we kept hearing the same words.

friedoverwhelmedexhausted
and also
resilienthopefulcommunity
01

Experts and practitioners, together

Each session paired national experts delivering practical, research-backed strategies with a Head Start program somewhere in the country sharing what is working on the ground.

02

Across state lines

One of the only places Head Start staff could connect with peers from other states. You told us that kind of cross-pollination almost never happens, so we made space for it.

03

Free and interactive

Every session was free and built around the chat. People brought their questions, their frustrations, and their wins.

From Dr. Neal Horen

It was never only about the children

We opened in March by asking what behavior you find most challenging. The chat filled in under a minute. Physical aggression. Eloping. Biting. Hitting staff. Self-harm.

Then something happened that shaped the next five months. The chat kept turning away from the children and toward the adults.

"How to keep calm and support others when everything is going wrong"

"Getting the adults to change their behaviors is the challenge"

"Teachers in the moment don't always have the capacity to remember something. They are too dysregulated in that moment."

We built the rest of the series around that.

What six months taught us

Each lesson links to the session it came from, along with the tools we built for it.

The gap we kept running into

In May I asked a simple question: how does your consultant help you? The chat filled with gratitude. Someone who listens. Someone who gives you new eyes on a child you had run out of ideas for. And then, underneath that, another set of answers started appearing.

I don't have one.

I wish we had one.

We are forced to refer out.

That is the thread running through all six sessions. The strategies we shared work. They only work as well as the person carrying them. Every speaker we brought to you was skilled in mental health consultation, which remains the most effective and least available support in this field.

The Practical Certificate in IECMHC

Don't rent it, build it

Building it means training a select few people you already have to bring the skills of consultation in house.

Most programs either don't have access to that skill set, and their staff and children feel that impact.

Or they rent that skill set with a contractor or an agency. It works until a budget gets cut. Then it's gone.

In our research with over 30 states we found that the key to sustaining consultation is building internal capacity. Be it at a state level all the way to a program level. Capacity you build inside your own organization stays.

  • Open to clinicians and non-clinicians alike. No clinical degree required.
  • Group supervision with a licensed clinician, included.
  • Built and taught by the same faculty you watched in this series.
  • Two in three people (of the 261 in our certificate now) will remain in their current role. They'll just be able to bring IECMHC skills into the role and into their program.
  • You don't always need a funded consultant position to start bringing this skillset in house.
October 2026 cohort
$3,000per seat, full program
Begins October 13, 2026
240 seats for this cohort
For clinicians and ECE staff alike
Less than the cost of attending a conference
Reserve a seat See the full program

Group rates for 5 or more seats.
si436@georgetown.edu

261 people are already building it

261 people started this training program with us in June.

 
2 in 3*

enrolled to bring IECMHC skills to their program.

Only
1 in 3*

joined to take on the role of a consultant.

*They hold titles like program director, education manager, disabilities manager, pyramid model coach, and various other roles in ECE, Home Visiting, and Early Intervention

Who they are and where they work

Consultation started in early learning and Head Start. This group comes from a good deal more than that.

Kelli McDermott closed our final session with something worth repeating. We started this series because we believe in bringing the stance of mental health consultation to as many people as possible. That belief comes from seeing it work, in the research and in our own practice. It was never driven by performance standards. We will keep showing up and doing this work regardless of what those standards say, because it is best practice for children, families, and programs.

Neal Horen, PhD Director, Infant, Early Childhood, and Relational Health
Thrive Center, Georgetown University
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