Commit to Keiki - December 2023 Newsletter

As we approach the end of 2023, Commit to Keiki would like to take a moment to express our heartfelt gratitude to all of our state and county leaders and elected officials, partners, and steering committee members who make the work we do possible. During this holiday season, let’s take the time to spread kindness and compassion, and reflect on the progress we’ve all helped to make together in addressing the critical priorities for Hawai‘i’s youngest keiki and their families across the state.

From all of us at Commit to Keiki, we wish you and your loved ones a joyful holiday season and a happy new year. Mahalo for being part of our journey, and we look forward to continuing to make a difference together in the new year.

Commit to Keiki Steering Committee year-end wrap-up meeting on Dec. 6, 2023.

MAUI RECOVERY SPOTLIGHT

Helping Maui’s Youngest Keiki and Families Heal

In Commit to Keiki’s Maui Recovery Spotlight Series, we will continue to highlight local organizations and nonprofits that have been working to ensure that Maui’s youngest keiki and their families receive the support and resources they need.

Association for Infant Mental Health Hawaiʻi (AIMH HI)

Q&A with Erin Henderson Lacerdo, Executive Director

The Association for Infant Mental Health in Hawaii (AIMH HI) is a non-profit whose mission is to nurture the emotional health and resiliency of Hawai‘i’s keiki by growing a statewide network of professionals and a system of care that is founded upon infant and early childhood mental health practices.

Q: What is your organization’s role in helping families with young children who’ve been affected by the wildfires on Maui? What was your immediate response after the fires?
A: At AIMH HI, we consider ourselves to be those who hold the hands of those who hold the hands of babies, and so, our approach was primarily to support the direct service providers.

In our field, we believe in the power of listening, and so we began attending daily meetings with the Office of Wellness and Resilience to listen and learn about the needs of babies and their families. We quickly learned that much of the response to the event was geared toward adults and we were able to be a voice for young children to be considered in the mental health supports that were being deployed.

We learned of a pop-up childcare site that sought to buffer children from the continuous exposure of the event – so parents could fill out paperwork, or take time to grieve, or look for loved ones. We connected with the program and offered to be present at the site for a few days to address any mental health needs that arose for children, parents, or staff.

AIMH HI is a part of a collaborative, Kakou for Keiki, which is based on Maui. Through that collaboration, we recognized that many of the direct service providers were also impacted by the fires. Within a few weeks of the fires, we hosted two listening sessions for families and providers. These listening sessions were designed to give a venue for families and direct service providers to share their experiences and thoughts with how mental health recovery might look like for their community. We are working to communicate their initial responses to leaders within the state system for their consideration and integration into the long term response. We are hosting follow up listening sessions in December and again in February.

AIMH HI also serves an Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant to preschools in Maui, with one of the sites being in Lahaina. We quickly connected with our schools and waited for guidance on what support would be helpful to the staff and families. Within a few weeks, we provided a listening session and consultation for preschool teachers to support immediate needs and discuss how to respond to the “trauma play” of children in schools.

We developed and disseminated a tip sheet for center based caregivers to prepare them with how to respond to children who were impacted by the events.

We also began offering a virtual support group for professionals working in the infant and early childhood arena so they may have a space to be held and process the heaviness of supporting a community in deep trauma.

Q: What are the current needs of families with young children on Maui?
A: We do not feel we can speak to what the current needs of families with young children on Maui are – as we do not work directly with them or are from their community. However, we do believe that there should be more opportunities for their voices to be heard, in ways that are accessible to them, so that decision makers can co-create solutions with consideration and respect.

Q: What are your needs in order to continue to provide services to families with young children on Maui in the long term?
A: We need to continue to uplift stories from the community of how mental health is impacting our youngest children. We need the state systems to recognize that this is an infant and early childhood mental health crisis – we have the chance to buffer the experiences of these young children. We can learn from other natural disasters how those who were under age five during these events and how they disparately are overrepresented in the criminal justice system as they age. We need policy makers to understand that young children, and all children, need stability, consistency, and predictability. All of that was taken with the fire. Policies need to ensure that children are not subjected to constant change, that parents also have stability so they can be present for their children, and that the impact of this event is not bound by time – this will be an on-going healing process for many years to come.

We also need more mental health professionals who are specialized in supporting the needs of children ages 0-5. We also need to recognize that mental health professionals may be of Western or indigenous training.