Joyce Sebian
Joyce Sebian MS Ed. is Senior Policy Associate at the Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development, National Technical Assistance Center for Children's Mental Health. In this role, she works on a variety of efforts focusing on children's mental health and collaboration across systems. She is author along with a team of colleagues at Georgetown University and Searchlight Consulting of a recently published monograph “A Public Health Approach to Children’s Mental Health: A Conceptual Framework”. The monograph can be found at http://gucchdtacenter.georgetown.edu/public_health.html. This monograph developed with the support of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) advances an approach to children’s mental health that applies public health concepts to efforts that support children’s mental health and development. Other areas of focus include: school mental health, rural behavioural health, evaluation and collaboration for outcomes. She works closely with SAMHSA, other federal and national partners to forward policy initiatives on behalf of children’s behavioural health. She coordinates a number of federal efforts to forward the policy priorities for Rural Behavioural Health and was co-editor for a Special Issue of the Journal of Rural Mental Health: Innovation in the Rural Behavioural Health Workforce for Children and Families, summer 2008. She coordinates a three pronged initiative for the Federal National Partnership (FNP), part of the Senior Federal Partners Workgroup. The FNP projects include development and implementation of action steps in Early Identification, Integration of Mental Health and Education, and Youth Guided Policies and Services.
Prior to her work at Georgetown, Joyce worked at the state and community level in Ohio and in Massachusetts. She has worked extensively in Early Care and Education initiatives and program implementation including prior work as a Head Start Director in the greater Boston area, and regional TA Child Development Specialist for the Mid-Atlantic States (Region III). She provided leadership in the development of curriculum and training/technical assistance for child development and program outcomes for Head Start, Early Head Start and other State and local collaborative. She worked to coordinate a county/regional Birth to Five Early Intervention Collaborative in NE Ohio. Her work helped to raise awareness of the importance of early childhood mental health and to build capacity in the counties for comprehensive early childhood mental health services and supports. Quality assurance, infrastructure and partnership development, sustainability and education and outreach with paediatric, primary care, maternal child health and neonatal intensive care entities are other areas of experience. Joyce received her Master's degree from Wheelock College in Boston (1978) and a BS degree in human development/social welfare from University of Maine, and spent her high school years in Fairbanks, Alaska. Joyce’s educational background in is the field of early childhood development, with a focus on public policy and leadership development. Joyce has a daughter, is married and enjoys learning about culture, biking, reading, and “urban gardening” among other things. She resides in the greater Washington DC metropolitan area.
