A Look at What’s Happening in Illinois

Effective January 1, 2018, Illinois enacted a law prohibiting the expulsion of children ages birth to five from all state licensed or funded programs.¹ The law, Public Act 100-0105, requires early childhood programs to use all available resources to try to retain children and to document the steps they have taken to work with those who exhibit “persistent and serious” challenging behaviors. If the program ultimately deems their efforts unsuccessful and does not feel they can serve the child, providers can work with families to move children to a program that better meets their needs, which the state refers to as a “planned transition.” The law does allow children to be temporarily removed from class when safety is a concern. Programs must also collect and report data on children who have left, whether through expulsion, a planned transition, or parent choice. This must include demographic information of these children.² The law outlines different methods or resources that a program should use when dealing with challenging behaviors, such as developmental screenings, referrals to early intervention, and early childhood mental health consultation.³

“Illinois has been at the vanguard of children’s mental health for a long time,” according to Kate Zinsser, associate professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.⁴ ECMHC has been available in different ECE settings since the early 2000s, and the Illinois Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (I/ECMHC) Initiative was created in 2015 to standardize services and establish a cross-systems model, starting with a pilot program in four communities.⁵ The model for mental health consultation is meant to be flexible and work in a range of early childhood settings.⁶ An evaluation of the pilot program found that the model prioritizes “relationship-building, reflective practice, and program-focused consultation as the means to build staff skills” so that they can more effectively serve children and families.⁷

According to Christine Brambila, the I/ECMHC manager in the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood Development, funding mechanism, culture, and leadership all impact the intervention time and intensity.⁸ A program’s funding stream impacts how it accesses mental health consultants, with state-funded pre-K programs and Head Start programs paying for services through their budgets. Child care providers, including centers, family child care, faith-based programs, and license-exempt care, can access I/ECMHC for free through Caregiver Connections, an organization funded through the Illinois Department of Human Services, according to Jenna Kelly, associate director of Training & Consultation at Caregiver Connections.⁹ She explained that the process for getting mental health consultation services can “look a little bit different in different parts of the state.” When fully staffed, Caregiver Connections hopes to have 46 mental health consultants statewide.¹⁰ A full list of consultants is available in a database that is open to all providers and programs, regardless of funding stream. In the database, mental health consultants can specify which languages they provide services in and what settings they work in.¹¹

The state used its 2019 Preschool Development Grant and federal COVID relief dollars through the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEERF) to further invest in I/ECMHC and expand access.¹² In 2020, Illinois transitioned from housing this work in a private entity to embedding it in the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood Development. The state is working to promote professional development, expand the I/ECMHC database, and improve public awareness to encourage uptake of services.¹³ In 2021, it passed the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultations Act to increase availability of this service and coordinate it with other supports for children’s social-emotional development. This law increased investment in I/ECMHC by $4.9 million.¹⁴

In 2021, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago released an evaluation of the three-year pilot where researchers found that implementation was effective overall.¹⁵ Early childhood providers with access to mental health consultation improved their reflective capacity and some reported decreased staff burnout. Teachers’ perception of behavior as problematic reduced significantly after working with mental health consultants.

Public Act 100-0105 also says that relevant state agencies can support program staff with training, technical support, and professional development. The law specifically mentions supports “to promote social-emotional development and behavioral health, to address challenging behaviors, and to understand trauma and trauma-informed care, cultural competence, family engagement with diverse populations, the impact of implicit bias on adult behavior, and the use of reflective practice techniques.”

Illinois is a Pyramid Model state, but access issues remain for many programs.¹⁶ Public pre-K programs have access to Pyramid, but child care providers often have to pay for Pyramid training out of pocket, which can be prohibitively expensive. The 2021 Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultations Act called on the state to increase funding and access to training for the Pyramid Model and similar tiered support systems.¹⁷

Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have published multiple reports on the law’s implementation based on the results of voluntary surveys and interviews with ECE providers. The first report, released in 2019, found “pervasive misunderstanding of the legislation,” with confusion among administrators regarding the law’s requirements.²² Providers still reported confusion with the law in the 2021 report.²³

Comparing survey data from 2018 to 2020 reveals that significantly fewer young children are being expelled now compared to before the law’s passage.²⁴ However, children continue to be excluded from programs in other ways, such as by “planned transitions” into other programs or by parents choosing to withdraw them.²⁵ The survey data revealed different rates of exclusion by program type and disparities based on student demographics. Family child care providers, who often have more difficulty accessing professional development and supports, “excluded proportionally far more children than center-based or school-based programs.”²⁶ School-based programs were the least likely to formally expel children, and children who left school-based programs usually did so because they were encouraged to withdraw.

Nearly all children excluded from programs were boys, and Black children were also overrepresented in expulsions. Children with diagnosed disabilities or individualized learning plans made up 50 percent of those who were transitioned into other programs. Providers reported that children who were excluded were likely to have had multiple adverse childhood experiences, such as food insecurity or parental unemployment. In general, children were most likely to be transitioned to other programs for displaying physically dangerous or aggressive behavior and were most likely to be expelled for non-aggressive disruptive behavior.

Administrators reported a host of steps taken to try to retain a child before ultimately excluding them. These included strategies such as switching classrooms, providing professional development to staff, and adding a behavioral aide to the classroom. Despite efforts to raise awareness about mental health consultation, only 37 percent of respondents utilized this support, and it was usually in response to a specific child's behavior, not as a preventive strategy. Programs that did not utilize mental health consultation either did not feel they needed it or were confused by the program. They also tended to exclude more children than programs that did use consultation, according to Zinsser, the lead researcher on the law’s implementation studies.

It is important to emphasize that these findings are based on voluntary survey data, because there is not, as of 2021, a statewide data system for reporting on exclusionary discipline.²⁷ While the legislation required programs to start reporting relevant data annually in 2020, Zinsser explained that “there is no way for the state to look in one place to figure out what’s going on with discipline across all types of early care and education programs.”²⁸ While the law has sparked some progress, state advocates and government agencies acknowledge that this is an iterative process. Children are still being excluded from programs and parties are using these implementation studies to guide policy and practice decisions. The law intentionally does not punish programs for removing students, but instead aims to support them so that they can retain more children.