In a previous interview, when asked about the future of Rooted in Relationships, Lynne Brehm said, “it is about building a system that can live on past whether Rooted exists or not, so that we can have a system in place to implement the Pyramid Model and other early childhood mental health (ECMH) practices that are appropriate for children.” It is a sort of existential question that Brehm holds dear, the sustainability of the ECMH work she has made a career.
Rooted in Relationships now faces a similar existential moment: what will the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation initiative that celebrated its first 10 years in 2023 look like without the woman who started it all? As of the end of June 2024, Brehm has retired from her position as Vice President of Early Childhood Mental Health at Nebraska Children and founding Director of Rooted in Relationships. Sami Bradley, who will take over in the role, says, “she will definitely be missed. It will feel like someone is missing for quite a while.” Brehm, after all was the sole employee of Rooted when the initiative began in 2013. But her story and Rooted’s goes back much further than that.
Even before then, Brehm had established herself in ECMH for Nebraska. As Bradley put it, “I think she has been a constant presence as early childhood mental health has taken off in Nebraska.” Betty Medinger, retired Senior Vice President of Nebraska Children, has known Brehm for years and recalls the early 90s when they both worked with Parent Aid Support Services for the local Health and Human Services office. She says that, long before Rooted began, their paths kept intertwining at Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and other ECMH circles. Medinger went on to work on a management team at the state level and Brehm hired on in the Public Health Division to manage an Early Childhood Systems Integration grant.
Mark Hald, a licensed child psychologist specializing in early childhood mental health who has acted as a consultant for Brehm in various capacities, notes a change in the climate of ECMH that perhaps began with the “Children Can’t Wait” report under then-Governor Mike Johanns, but, he points out, funding for such programs was still a long time coming.
It was sometime around 2010 that Jessie Rasmussen of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund (BECF) approached Nebraska Children to discuss Sixpence data they’d seen about the social-emotional needs of children and asked them to put together a proposal BECF could fund. Nebraska Children partnered with DHHS, NDE, private therapists, and consultants. Hald, who was one of those therapists, remembers the conference in Kearney where the group met to strategize for advancing the cause of ECMH in the state. In those early days, he said professionals had to fight to even see kids.
Medinger was also a part of that process and had been hired by Nebraska Children where she was deeply involved in the ECMH focus that became Rooted in Relationships. In 2013, Brehm was hired to run the new program, and Medinger said this was a clear choice because she knew with Brehm that “it will be done right. She will follow through.” Medinger added, “she will make sure it’s a quality product.”
In those early years, Brehm focused on family support, parent engagement, and educating stakeholders on the nature and importance of early childhood mental health. Much of what Rooted achieved in the beginning revolved around figuring out processes and building both statewide and local infrastructures to support ECMH work. The work has been guided by ideas and feedback through an ongoing Advisory Committee composed of state and local stakeholders representing multiple divisions and departments of NDE, DHHS, and the University, among many others. Rooted piloted 3 communities, Dawson County, Saline County, and Dakota County, on which to focus their initial efforts.
JoAnn Gieselman, who was chosen to lead the Board of Directors for Rooted work in Dakota County, met Brehm when she was engaged with Cardinal Connections in the local community. Rooted offered training on collective impact and Gieselman said, “I was on fire once I understood collective impact. Lynne was that inspiration to me of what collaboration and sustainability are.” Gieselman describes Brehm as “an amazing lady” committed to high-quality childcare. She explains that Brehm has been a leader in promoting Pyramid Model training, which she says has really unified everyone involved: “we have a community that talks Pyramid.” She has been happy to see the expansion of Rooted work in Dakota County and the positive impact it has had on providers.
Another early success for Rooted was the connection Brehm made with Barb Jackson at the Munroe-Meyer Institute (MMI) to evaluate the efforts of the initiative. When MMI was asked to evaluate Rooted’s work, Jackson said she could see that Brehm “knew how to use data.” By examining Rooted through that data lens, Jackson saw significant classroom changes related to the curriculum and content surrounding the Pyramid Model and other ECMH resources that Rooted helped establish. She stressed that Rooted created a recognition of the importance of coaching and coach training as crucial to supporting those going through the Pyramid Model process.
One of the things Jackson most admired about Brehm in those early years was her ability to bring together a diverse group of people and make it work. She said Brehm wanted to build a system that connected classroom components of the Pyramid Model to a continuum of services. Medinger nicely sums up Brehm’s ability to do this, “not everyone sees how systems work together. Where their intersection is and where they can work together. She (Brehm) gets that; she sees the connections.” In that system-creation process, Jackson describes Brehm as “good at consensus building.”
It was that ability to build connections that led to many of Rooted’s major achievements over its first ten years. Hald, for example, was involved with Helping Babies from the Bench under Judge Douglas Johnson of Omaha when he came across Circle of Security Parenting (COSP) and trained as a facilitator. He began talking to Brehm about it, and they were able to put together funding to train approximately 100 people in September of 2014. COSP has since become a mainstay of Rooted’s work.
Brehm identified in COSP training an element called Reflective Practice and went to Kelli Hauptmann of University of Nebraska Lincoln’s Center on Families, Children, and the Law, who spearheads Reflective Practice training. Brehm saw that Reflective Practice was vital to creating the nurturing relationships and the high-quality environments important to the Pyramid Model. Hauptmann says Reflective Practice cemented the partnership between the organizations and that Brehm saw possibilities beyond COSP for many more people who would want to train through Rooted. Hauptmann says, “in working with Lynne and Betty (Brehm and Medinger), it right away became clear that these were two powerhouse minds. Their ability to think through the big picture and map that out and yet understand the details, that’s uncommon.” Brehm and Medinger were able to bring together the people who wanted to be trained, those who were to become the trainers, and find the funding to pay for it all. The Train the Trainer program that resulted was instrumental to Rooted’s success, Hauptmann says.
Rooted also plays a key role in the Nebraska Association of Infant Mental Health (NAIMH), where Brehm is Board Treasurer. Bradley, who co-leads NAIMH, has worked with Rooted for 8 years and says, “that Lynne’s strategic vision has been so instrumental in shaping how Nebraska views early childhood mental health.” Bradley describes maturing in her position under Brehm’s guidance and says she was very eager in the beginning of her work but Brehm made her slow down. She admits, “if it had been up to me, I’d have taken on things right away and probably not have done as good a job. Lynne was very intentional and thoughtful.” It would seem that what Bradley has learned under Brehm has paid off, as NAIMH recently partnered with the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health to offer Infant Mental Health endorsements to early childhood professionals in Nebraska.
Clearly, Lynne Brehm has had a significant impact on Rooted in Relationships in its first 10 years. Just a few of the descriptions those who have worked with her closely offer of her as a professional are: organized, passionate, patient, empathetic, analytical, kind, and a good communicator and listener. This is something that Gieselman emphasizes, “one of the things I love about Lynne is that she listens; she really listens.” Hauptmann also praises her communication skills, “I really trust her; everything she says, she really means.” Hald says he has never had a bad moment with Brehm and describes the way “you can’t say no to her because she affirms what you bring and then does this ‘you know we really need you and the state needs you.’”
Gay McTate is a mental health practitioner in Omaha who was part of an original group supporting the use of the Pyramid Model in the community. She said that Lynne was able to review data about children of certain ages and set guidelines as to where Rooted fit among established collaboratives. But it is the human impact of Rooted that McTate most remembers. She shares a story about a grandfather who had raised his grandchild and who took part in a Rooted training. McTate said the grandfather “talked about how it helped him understand both what his grandchild needed and understand the things he hadn’t done that he wished he had done differently with his own daughter.” Similarly, she goes on to say that she hears repeatedly how Rooted training has impacted not just the children providers work with but also the way they interact with their own children. She sums up the years she’s worked with Brehm: “I have gained immensely from both seeing how she does things and from the knowledge that she brings. It has been a real gift to me to work with her.”
Medinger illustrates Brehm’s commitment to ECMH work when she tells of the nights in the early 90s when they both had children and full-time jobs, but would sit down at 9 p.m. to write a federal crisis nursery grant. She says that these were some of her favorite times with Brehm, those late-night planning sessions and grant writing, adding, “she’s good to have in your corner—good times and bad. She’s very empathetic. She has good ideas on how to solve a problem.”
Brehm’s colleagues also note her warm and compassionate personal side. Medinger recalls when she and Brehm would attend a national conference in Washington, DC. When the conference was over, they would, on their own time and money, catch a train to New York City to see shows. In true Brehm overachiever fashion, Medinger said their motto was “push yourself, you’re on vacation.” Bradley also shared a conference related story, where, while at the NTI conference in Florida, Brehm told Bradley she needed to try seafood: “She put a piece of fish on my plate and said, ‘you have to try it; I’m your boss.”
This is the picture of Lynne Brehm that emerges: a woman who encourages others, who pushes subtly but allows people to find their own way. Hald calls this ability the “brilliance of Lynne Brehm. She knows her consumers well enough to know you can’t just tell people what to do. You have to give them concepts and ideas, but also a strategy. You have to help them see the need and the goal. Then help them get there.” It’s this skill that has gotten Rooted to where it is today.
So it’s true what Hauptmann says, it is “going to be a huge loss not having her here anymore.” But as any great leader does, she has prepared the way ahead. Hald says that Brehm hires “competent people she knows can do the work and gets out of their way.” Gieselman says, “as she has done with me, she has done with the staff around her; she has trained them well, and I have a lot of confidence with Rooted going forward.” Hald describes what he believes to be a core principle of Brehm’s, “she is not Rooted, everything that has happened is greater than her facilitation.” Perhaps that’s because, according to Medinger, Rooted “evolved because she (Brehm) is a team player and doesn’t have a big ego.”
Bradley has worked closely with Brehm over the last 6 months to prepare herself to step into the leadership role. She says, “I feel like the pieces of her (Brehm) have rubbed off on all of us,” and is “hopeful for the future in carrying on her legacy.” Of the woman who trained her and who has had such a big role in ECMH for Nebraska, Bradley offers, “I wish we could have an accurate count of how many children and families she’s impacted over the past 40 years in the workforce. It’s just hard to sum it up when you work with someone that impactful.”
So how do you sum it up when someone has been as integral to the type of work Lynne Brehm has done during her career, when someone has been inspirational and compassionate, when someone has acted as mentor and friend? Perhaps, it is best to step aside and let those who know her best speak. From JoAnn Gieselman: “Lynne, you are an amazing leader and always have been. We will always look up to you. Your name will carry on forever in Rooted. There will be no comparison though there will be others who will come along and do a fantastic job because of you, because of all you’ve done. Thank you for everything!”
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