Register Now for IECMH Webinar Series

The Pennsylvania Key’s Infant Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC) Program is partnering with ZERO TO THREE to bring several no-cost webinar series to Pennsylvania early childhood education, Early Intervention, and Home Visiting professionals to support their learning and growth.

Each session requires pre-registration and space is limited. Click each link below to register for the individual session and see additional instructions.

This 90-minute virtual webinar supports EC professionals in understanding the value of collaboration for themselves as well as the children and families they serve. We want them to know they are not alone in addressing the significant and heart-wrenching challenges that emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. In these times, more than ever, they need a team of diversely experienced professionals who share a common language and common goal – to promote the health and well-being of the young children and families they support. This webinar includes an overview of the research regarding the power of collaborative service models in early childhood and introduces the P5 competencies as a valuable tool that supports effective collaboration across early childhood workforce sectors.

Participants will learn how to integrate mindfulness into their interactions and interventions with young children and their families. These trainings will enable participants to better understand how mindfulness contributes to well-being, self-awareness and self-regulation and decreased stress. Participants will understand how mindfulness can contribute to their own professional development and be a tool they can share with the children and families they work with.

The field of Infant Mental Health is a relatively new, having its roots in the early 20th century and continuing to build and expand through a growing body of empirical evidence and clinical practice. This session addresses a wide range of areas from the historical foundations of infant and early childhood mental health, importance of attachment, building relationships, responsive caregiving as well as disorders that can disrupt these processes. Participants will gain a better understanding of the mental health needs of infants, toddlers, and young children and their families and strategies for supporting them.

Pregnancy and the birth of a child are significant markers in the life of not only the developing baby, but the parents and family as well. The transition from the imagined child and the imagined parent to the actual baby and development of the parental identity are key components of this course. This session provides an overview of the psychology of pregnancy reviewing key concepts around development, identity, and issues surrounding complicated pregnancies, prematurity and loss.

A child’s brain undergoes an amazing period of development from birth to three—producing more than a million neural connections each second. This session provides participants with an understanding of how brain development occurs within the context of relationships in infancy and early childhood. Participants will explore key concepts such as “mind-sight,” “serve & return,” experience dependency and expectancy, as they relate to neural development. Participants will learn how the limbic system and executive functioning are mediated through relationships and experience. Finally, participants will examine the impact of trauma and toxic stress on brain development.

The arrival of a baby whose development, physical or cognitive capacities are delayed or reflect disability can have significant impact on the family. Understanding developmental disorders and disabilities and supporting the young child in reaching their optimal potential while supporting the parents and family is a key role of many providers across disciplines such as health, mental health, early intervention and early care and education. This session will review ways to identify developmental disorders and disabilities, provide early intervention and foster family support and competence.

Many children have had early traumatic experiences. These children come into our lives and our programs with a variety of developmental needs. Professionals must understand the specific needs of the children and families they are working with in order to effectively build in strategies and support to help deal with these traumatic experiences. This session provides an overview of interventions which incorporate the lens of trauma or chronic/toxic stress to achieve trauma-informed practice.

Reflective supervision is a supervisor – supervisee relationship that pays attention to the influence of relationships on other relationships, the parallel process, and empowers the supervisee to discover solutions/concepts through consciously using strategies that include active listening and waiting. The goal of reflective supervision is to support staff who then support families- and create a more effective working relationship. In this session participants will explore the components of reflective supervision, observe and practice key skills associated with reflective practice and explore strategies for providing responsive versus reactive responses in the supervisory relationship.

Encountering challenging behavior in infant-toddler care and education settings is inevitable. Such challenges can pose a significant dilemma for the professional who may struggle with how best to respond to a child who may be preverbal, who does not use logic, and /or whose memory cannot yet retain rules or limits over the long term. Challenging behavior in very young children can evoke strong emotional reactions in professionals who are working to respond to such incidents in a sensitive, supportive, and nurturing fashion. This training session provides participants with the opportunity to reflect on their own beliefs and feelings regarding challenging behavior, to learn more about some of the antecedents of challenging behavior, and to practice discussing such challenges with parents in an effective and supportive manner.