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KAIMH Connections
Resources for Early Childhood Mental Health Advocates
Updates | December, 2023
Highlights in this newsletter include information for on-demand reflective supervision training, Kansas Connecting Communities program, tips for reducing the stress with holiday gatherings, Black Mamas Matter Alliance, KAIMH conference info, upcoming professional development, and more!
In partnership, the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health® and First3Years is excited to provide Reflective Supervision/Consultation training through on-demand webinars. Session 1: Reflective Supervision/Consultation: How Do I Begin?, Session 2: RS/C Best Practices, and Session 3: RS/C: Parallel Processing. The cost is $35.
Kansas Connecting Communities (KCC) program is a Kansas’ perinatal psychiatric access program. It has a toll-free provider consultation line that is staffed by a mental health clinician to provide resource and referral support. It also has a perinatal psychiatrist and an OB/GYN with perinatal mental health certification to provide case or psychiatric consultations with prescribers on best treatment practices for pregnant and postpartum individuals.
Additionally, the KCC Team can provide free perinatal mental health and substance use training to providers and programs, as well as clinic or program specific perinatal behavioral health screening, implementation, and technical assistance. They are able to customize training content and match providers/programs with subject-matter expert trainings based on their unique training or technical assistance needs.
Check out this article from Child Mind Institute on how to take the stress out of family gatherings. It has suggestions on how to prepare your child, how to manage relatives' expectations and how to help picky eaters at a holiday family gathering.
The Black Mamas Matter Alliance is a national network of Black women-led and Black-led, birth and reproductive justice organizations and multi-disciplinary professionals, working across the full-spectrum of maternal and reproductive health. Their website has helpful resources, including publications, reports and issue briefs. Click on the image below to download their Black Maternal Mental Health Factsheet.
Kansas Child Care Training Opportunities offers scholarships to help early childhood providers continue to grow their career and expertise. Educators can request advance pay for the registration fees and request travel/lodging reimbursement. When applying, be sure to choose the In-State scholarship application.
Save the Date - KAIMH Conference 2024 April 18-19th, Overland Park, KS Keynote Highlight: Dr. Barbara Stroud
Dr. Barbara Stroud will be presenting, "Relationships, Regulation, and Resilience," at the Friday session. Dr. Stroud received her Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from Nova Southeastern University, and she has worked largely with children in urban communities with severe emotional disturbance. Dr. Stroud’s professional career path has allowed her to work across service delivery silos supporting professionals in mental health, early intervention (Part C), child welfare, early care and education, family court staff, primary care, and other arenas. She is highly regarded and has been a key player in the inception and implementation of cutting-edge service delivery to children Prenatal to five and their families; her innovative approaches have won national awards. More specifically, Dr. Stroud is a former preschool director, a non-public school administrator, director of infant mental health services and agency training coordinator. She has held an adjunct faculty position at California State Long Beach and maintained a faculty position in the Infant-Parent Mental Health Fellowship for 12 years. Currently, Dr. Stroud’s primary focus is professional training and private consultation from an anti-racist lens, with a focus on social justice, in the field of infant mental health. Dr. Stroud remains steadfast in her mission to ‘changing the world – one relationship at a time.'
Embedded in all of her trainings and consultations are the activities of reflective practice, demonstrating cultural attunement, and holding a social justice lens in the work. Dr. Stroud’s book “How to Measure a Relationship” [published 2012] is improving infant mental health practices around the globe and is now available in Spanish. Her second book, an Amazon best seller, “Intentional Living: finding the inner peace to create successful relationships” walks the reader through a deeper understanding of how their brain influences relationships.
The Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health has this helpful resource on using supportive language about maternal mental health!
Check out these upcoming professional development opportunities that support your Infant Mental Health Endorsement® from the Early Childhood Investigations Webinars, Kansas Child Care Training Opportunities, Kansas Children's Service League, and Child Care Aware.
