Strategic Partnerships

The Alliance is forming cooperative partnerships with organizations whose missions and objectives align.  The Alliance is unique in that it's primary focus is on workforce development strategies for infant/young child-family professionals.

The Center for Reflective Practice at the Center for Early Education & Development University of Minnesota

The mission of the Center for Early Education & Development (CEED) is to “help early educators, caregivers, practitioners, and programs achieve the best outcomes for the infants and young children they serve.” CEED’s Center for Reflective Practice (CRP) serves as an intellectual home for high-quality, cutting-edge research in reflective practice. In addition, it disseminates knowledge about reflective practice, helps professionals incorporate reflective practice principles into their work, and informs policies specific to infant and early childhood mental health. The work of CEED and CRP is aligned with the core values and recommended practices articulated by the Alliance.

The Alliance and CRP/CEED will collaborate to produce knowledge, publications, professional development opportunities, and related activities that serve to improve the optimal development in infants and young children, their parents and caregivers, and the professionals who serve them.

Erikson Institute: FAN Training

Erikson Institute is a graduate school in child development offering masters’ degrees in child development, early education and developmentally informed social work with a concentration in infant and early childhood mental health. Since 2002, Erikson has offered a post-master’s certificate program in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health.  Erikson has developed a unique approach to relationship-building called the FAN (Facilitating Attuned Interactions).  The FAN is a conceptual framework and practical tool to facilitate attunement in relationships and reflective practice. The FAN focuses on the parents’ concerns and uses five core processes to help professionals better attune and connect with parents in the moment as well as increase their self-awareness and intentional use of self.  FAN training includes Foundational Training followed by a period of Facilitated Practice.  FAN training is applicable to professionals working in a wide range of settings including home visitation, early intervention, early childhood mental health consultation, mental health services, pediatrics, and child welfare. The FAN Training is a competency-informed training with 28 hours of content that is aligned with the Competency Guidelines and can be counted toward the nationally and internationally recognized system, the Alliance’s Endorsement for Culturally Sensitive, Relationship-based Practice Promoting Infant Mental Health. 

Fielding Graduate University Infant and Early Childhood Development program

Fielding Graduate University offers a Ph.D. degree focused on Infant and Early Development, specifically related to  issues and challenges that arise in infancy and early childhood and is now pleased to announce its new Masters degree which focuses on infant and early childhood development with an emphasis in mental health. The Masters is designed for professionals from early childhood, mental health, health and early intervention backgrounds who can benefit from this program of studies.   

Fielding Graduate University is an accredited program for graduate studies in a variety of areas including Infant and Early Childhood Development and is a partner with the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health.  In light of this collaboration, Fielding offers a variety of courses that address many of the competencies appropriate for those going on towards an Endorsement for Culturally Sensitive, Relationship-Focused Practice Promoting Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health including classes and supervised experience in reflective practice.   Coursework focuses on the development of strong infant and early childhood mental health leaders who envision how they might change practice and policy in the larger national and international arena.  

Start Early (formerly the Ounce)

Since 1982, Start Early (formerly the Ounce of Prevention Fund) has persistently pursued a single goal: that all American children—particularly those born into poverty—have quality early childhood experiences in the crucial first five years of life.

Start Early has a portfolio of professional development solutions that includes The Essentials of Home Visiting (formerly Achieve OnDemand), a high quality online training program for family support professionals. The Alliance supports & approves The Essentials of Home Visiting online professional development training courses. These online, self-paced learning modules count toward in-service training requirements to earn or renew Endorsement.  While completion of these courses will count toward an Endorsement application or renewal, they may not fully satisfy a knowledge/skill area.

The Essentials of Home Visiting course offerings include:

• Foundations of IMH Practice in Home Visiting

• Basics of Home Visiting

• The Impact of Trauma in Home Visiting

• Domestic Violence in Home Visiting

• Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3) Overview & Best Practices

For more information about The Essentials of Home Visiting, please reach out to essentialsofhv@startearly.org.

University of California Davis Continuing Professional Education Napa Infant-Parent Mental Health Fellowship

The Napa Infant-Parent Mental Health Fellowship is a 15-month intensive transdisciplinary program developed in 2002 through the Parent-Infant & Child Institute (PICI founded in 1998). The Fellowship has been operating continuously in the Napa Valley for 16 years and is affiliated with the University of California Davis Extension that grants Fellows 23 graduate units and a transcript in perpetuity upon program completion (UCDE Napa Fellowship). The goal of the Napa Fellowship is to provide high quality post-graduate training for professionals working with young children, pregnancy through age five, and their families and other caregivers. The UCDE Napa Fellowship is committed to inter-disciplinary training with a philosophical belief that infants, young children, and families are best served in the context of existing family and professional relationships where referral and consultation are used to address specific issues while maintaining a comprehensive, collaborative, and continuing approach to care. The training is based on a practice model encompassing promotion, prevention, early intervention, pan-disciplinary services, and discipline-specific services.

The intent of the partnership between UCDE Napa Fellowship/Parent-Infant & Child Institute and the Alliance is to ensure that the variety of courses UCDE offers address the competencies appropriate for those going towards Endorsement for Culturally Sensitive, Relationship-Focused Practice Promoting Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health; to promote participation in high quality infant and early childhood mental health training programs offered through institutions for higher learning; and to partner around activities focused on building workforce capacity and the evidence base for best practices in infant mental health. 

Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute

The Infant Mental Health program at Wayne State University’s Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute (MPSI) offers a Masters and PhD Dual-Title Degree program for graduate students to gain expertise in infant mental health practice and research, conducts research that informs infant mental health policy and practice and provide professional development for community agencies. MPSI has a long history of offering advanced training in IMH. The Dual-Title Degree program is offered in conjunction with the Department of Psychology, the School of Social Work and the College of Nursing and offers many advantages to both clinical and doctoral students whose goal is to work with and study very young children and their families.

The partnership between the Alliance and MPSI allows for collaboration to ensure that the content and strategies of the Masters and PhD Dual-Title programs in Infant Mental Health are accurately and consistently aligned with the Competency Guidelines and Endorsement; collaborate to mutually market the activities of both the Alliance and MPSI; describe the graduate studies as competency-informed and aligned with the Competency Guidelines with coursework counted toward the nationally and internationally recognized system; partner on mutually-determined activities to promote early relationships and the fusion of infant mental health principles and practices into training the workforce and building the evidence-base for the field.

Contractual Partnerships

The Alliance is forming cooperative partnerships with organizations whose missions and objectives align.  The Alliance is unique in that it's primary focus is on workforce development strategies for infant/young child-family professionals. In addition, contractual partners seek specific effort from The Alliance on a particular project or set of projects.

Healthy Families America

Healthy Families America® (HFA) is an internationally recognized, evidence-based home visiting model designed to prevent high rates of child abuse occurrences in children under five.  Launched in 1992, it is now one of the most replicated research-based home visiting models in the country, serving more than 85,000 families annually through 560 affiliates in 37 States, DC, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the US Virgin Islands and Canada.  Recognizing that our earliest relationships lay the foundation for lifelong healthy development, services are initiated prenatally or right after the birth of a baby.  HFA utilizes Attachment Theory as a foundation for parent-child interaction.  Infant mental health (IMH) principles and practices are embedded throughout various training and service components.

The intent of the partnership between HFA and the Alliance is to elevate, strengthen, and grow the field of HFA home visiting (nationally and internationally), recognizing the role, credibility, and expertise of home visitors through competency-informed endorsement, in addition to the critical importance of supervisors to provide the highest quality reflective supervision in support of staff and improved family outcomes.  Further, the Alliance and those states whose IMH associations have licensed the use of the Competency Guidelines and have Healthy Families programs will recognize HFA as an infant mental health informed national, strategic partner and reach out to engage HFA staff in training of mutual interest and professional collaboration.