Please plan to join us for our Breakfast for Babies event on Friday, July 23rd, 2021 from 9am until noon! This very special meeting will be the kick-off for an ongoing series of listening sessions, when we will have opportunities to spend time hearing the stories of underrepresented cultural groups and communities.
“Self-Awareness and Liberating Infant Mental Health” - A reflective conversation about THE TENETS: Diversity-Informed Tenets for Work with Infants, Children, and their Families.
Where do you see yourself in the Diversity-Informed Tenets for work with infants, children, and their families? What have you encountered on your journey along the many paths that lead to the intersection of race, racism, power, privilege, and Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health?
Created by The Irving Harris Foundation in 2012, and now in their second edition, the foundation refers to the Tenets as: A Tool, a Stance, a Life-Long Journey. Their Tenets Initiative envisions a workforce in which all individuals, programs, organizations and systems of care embed principles of diversity, equity and inclusion into their work serving infants, children and families.
Megan Smith and Erick Stephens, colleagues in Rochester, NY, will share the journey of their organizations – and their own journeys – with the Tenets. They will bring particular focus to the first of the ten Tenets, "Self-awareness leads to better services for families." They will hold up a mirror to the personal and professional biases, values, and beliefs that can get in the way of being culturally sensitive, relationship-focused IECMH professionals.
Then, in the Breakfast for Babies tradition, we will carry these questions into small group discussions!
Registration cost is $15 per person.
If proof of membership in either NYS-AIMH or NYZTT is provided at time of registration, the fee is waived.
PLEASE NOTE: Subscribers to NYS-AIMH are NOT automatically members of NYS-AIMH. Subscribers have agreed to be a part of our mailing list. Members are those individuals who have paid for a 1 or 2 year membership. Please do not upload your subscriber verification as proof of membership to NYS-AIMH.
Cancelation Policy
No refund can be made for cancellation seven or fewer working days before the event or for no-shows. Cancellations more than seven working days before a workshop will result in a refund, less a $15.00 cancellation fee. Requests for refunds must be received in writing.
Megan Smith, MT-BC, LCAT, IMH-E®, Infant Mental Health Specialist, is the Project Manager of the new Mary Ellen Institute at SPCC in Rochester, NY, created to increase access to and build professional capacity in Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health and Reflective Supervision through training, consultation, and support. Megan is also co-founder and executive director of 501(c)3 Alice’s Encore: Community Music & Mindfulness, Inc. Megan holds a Bachelor's Degree in Music Therapy from Nazareth College and a Master's Degree in Music Therapy and Counseling from Drexel University. As a music therapist and family trauma therapist, she has worked across the lifespan in educational, medical, behavioral health, and child welfare systems with a focus on children 0-6 and parent-child relationships. Her clinical and academic research has included Group Music Therapy for Empathy and Self-Esteem Development in Children, and Development of a Model for Music Therapy in the Pediatric Emergency Department. She currently co-facilitates training and presentations on the topics of Trauma, Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health, Systemic Racism, and Reflective Supervision at the local and national level. In her current role, Megan feels privileged to do the relationship-building work of advocating about the importance of holding the baby in mind across all child-serving systems. Megan highly values the intersection of present-moment reflective practice and curiosity as a necessary foundation for professionals who are doing work that requires vulnerability within relationships. Megan highly values the intersection of present-moment reflective practice and curiosity as a necessary foundation for professionals who are doing work that requires vulnerability within relationships.
As the Parent Engagement Specialist for Healthi Kids, Erick Stephens provides technical assistance and support to schools to strengthen and improve parent engagement efforts. He also works directly with parents training them on advocacy and connecting them to opportunities to impact policy, systems, and environmental change in schools. Erick served as a Youth Service Assistant at the Phillis Wheatley Branch Library in Rochester's Southwest and was the Parent Liaison at James P.B. Duffy School #12, where he now volunteers and runs a program to help develop leaders at the school through mentoring. Stephens is currently completing his Bachelor of Science in Political Science at the University of Buffalo.
Breakfast for Babies is a collaboration between The New York State Association for Infant Mental Health (NYS-AIMH) and New York Zero-To-Three (NYZTT). The program will be web-based with a Zoom sign-in provided to all registrants.
