Training and Consultation

I am available throughout the year for training and consultation on issues affecting infant, child and parent mental health as well as practice issues experienced by professionals in numerous fields who interact with children and families and who make decisions that affect their lives.

Training and consultations are tailored to the interests of individuals and organizations and can address practice issues of professionals in mental health; pediatrics, medicine and allied health fields; nursing; early childhood, parent and special education; child protection; law enforcement and the legal system.

Training and consultation formats integrate key concepts and up-to-date knowledge on common topics such as:

  • Infant mental health and attachment
  • Using a developmental perspective in work with children and families
  • Child development: typical and atypical
  • Transition to parenthood
  • Parenting and the unfolding parent-child relationship
  • How children learn to manage emotions
  • Effects of stress, trauma and loss on the developing child

Training and consultation for early intervention and mental health professionals in individual or group formats can include:

  • Infant and child-parent psychotherapy
  • Relationship-based practice with children, parents and families
  • Reflective consultation to put learning into action
  • Support for supervisors facilitating reflective practice groups and/or providing psychotherapy supervision
  • Organizational consultation to integrate infant and early childhood mental health “best practices” and reflective practice
  • Topical reading and practice seminars

Periodically, I offer psychotherapy or topical practice seminars. Two such seminars are:

Child-Parent Psychotherapy Seminar

This seminar is generally organized as five two-hour meetings. The cost is affordable and can include CEU documentation.

Discussions and case material address conceptual and practical aspects of doing relationship-based, dyadic psychotherapy with children birth to five and their parents. Readings offer grounding in a developmental perspective, the therapist role and techniques of psychotherapy. The first hour addresses key concepts and the second hour addresses case material.

This seminar can be adapted to relationship-based work with older children, adolescents and their parents.

Infant Observation Seminar

Infant Observation is a training model initiated in 1949 by Esther Bick of the Tavistock Clinic in London, England. It is used extensively in Britain and Europe to train psychotherapists and early interventionists and increasingly in the United States. Observers visit an infant weekly in the home generally from birth to one year and see first hand how the baby develops in the context of family relationships. Narratives of visits are read and discussed in a regular small group seminar. Infant Observation offers an unparalleled opportunity to learn observational and self-reflection skills that are central to the helping professions and essential to work with infants, children and their parents.