Mental Health and Wellness Specialist

Shine Early Learning • Full-time • Remote (United States) • from $55,000 / year • 1d ago

Who We Are:

Shine Early Learning partners with states and local communities to accelerate child and family outcomes by providing professional development and other supports. Since its founding in 2011, Shine Early Learning has partnered with cities,states, and programs across the U.S. serving hundreds of thousands of students, families, and educators. Shine Early Learning’s experts have decades of experience in early child care education, training, and technical assistance. Montana selected Shine Early Learning as the state’s new regulatory and quality technical assistance services vendor.

The Montana based project, named SPARK Learning Lab Montana (SPARK), provides regulatory and quality technical assistance to child care programs and professionals across the state. We provide technical assistance and training with a focus on building relationships, using a practice-based model that includes self-directed, group, and one-on-one learning. We are seeking professionals who are eager to make a meaningful impact on the lives of young children by supporting quality improvement efforts for the child care providers who serve them. We are building a local, Montana based team of leaders, technical assistance staff, and other specialists, working across the state to ensure continued regional and community knowledge and engagement.

Job Summary:

The Mental Health and Wellness Specialist is responsible for providing direct, individualized program-level training to Montana early education and care programs who are seeking to increase their mental health and wellness support for children, families, and staff and will benefit from one-on-one and/or group technical assistance. The Specialist is deployed to support early learning programs using a set of universal resources including but not limited to mental health and wellness evidence-based tools, job-aids, templates, classroom observations, facilitated conversations, and instructor-led training. The Mental Health and Wellness Specialist will lead the development of a statewide support strategy. These strategies and tools will support diverse early care and education organizations to 1) foster trauma-informed environments at the organizational, center, and classroom levels; 2) integrate resilience-focused practices into daily operations; 3) build effective internal and external mental health referral and support systems; and 4) reduce stigma around accessing mental health services for the benefit of children, families, and staff. Training occurs both in-person and virtually for individuals and groups of early childhood program leaders and staff.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:

• Develops a tiered approach to promoting trauma informed, culturally competent Mental Health and wellness strategies to support a diverse range of early childhood education environments, including a tailored scope and sequence of strategies and activities that can be adapted to meet the needs of diverse community and agency contexts

• Develops training and technical assistance workshops, tools, and implementation manuals to support Mental Health and Wellness strategy dissemination

• Facilitates, presents and participates in both internal and externally-facing meetings, professional learning communities, events and individual and group trainings as required

• Provides individual, in-person coaching that is supported by virtual sessions as needed for assigned programs

• Curates a set of universal resources that support early care professionals to recognize the signs of and mitigating the resulting behaviors brought on by mental, social and emotional health issues, including trauma

• Works with a team to better understand current child, family, and staff mental health and wellness models, including Part B and Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Act, and make recommendations for integration

• Collaborates with the SPARK team and community to identify and curate directories of local resources available to provide culturally responsive and trauma-informed mental health services and consultative support

• Participates in assigned meetings, events and training as required.

Job Requirements:

1. Bachelor’s in Early Childhood, Social Work, Mental Health or Behavior Health, or a related field. Master’s or certification preferred.

2. 5+ years experience in supporting individuals in mental and behavioral health, experience in Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health is preferred.

3. 2+ years experience consulting, advising, or coaching.

4. Physical exam and background checks are required for this position.

5. Travel required locally or long-distance up to 40% of the time for work-related meetings and functions.

6. Must have a valid driver’s license and/or reliable transportation.

7. Montana residency required

Application Closing Date : January 6, 2025

When/Where/How Much:

Start Date: Winter 2025