2010 Early On Annual Conference & Faculty Colloquium - FULL

This presentation will include large and small group discussion about the opportunities to infuse foster care topics into Early On pre-service training. Goals include: understanding in-service practitioners’ recommendations about necessary pre-service knowledge and skills for working with infant foster care populations, identifying opportunities within existing curricula for infusing foster care topics and discussions, and discussing how and where to use sample curricula case studies provided for the participants.

Participants will be provided with an overview of the relationship between housing, the environment, and health. Discussion will also focus on the environmental contaminants and impact on hearing, vision, and the child’s capacity to learn and communicate. Participants will learn of resources to promote safe, green environments and a holistic approach to health and wellness in infants and toddlers.

Anyone wishing to improve his or her communication skills will benefit by learning how to use a variety of tools presented in this workshop. Benefits include strengthened relationships and improved health due to reduced stress. The presentation will include stories of crucial conversations working well, small group work with people sharing examples, and trainers providing strategies for participants to use in day-to-day life.

The session will discuss the importance of developing a relationship-based approach, emphasizing interpersonal skills in working with infants and toddlers and their families. The importance of parallel process will be reviewed with participants. The session will also discuss language connections and the use of age appropriate developmental techniques and tools to enhance the social, emotional, and communication development of infants and toddlers.

Often what looks like misbehavior may just be “missed-communication.” This workshop will identify some of the most common “missed-communication” exhibited by young children. Specific intervention strategies and hands-on solutions will be provided. Participants will define the unique challenges when children ‘miscommunicate’ and understand strategies designed to help children manage their own behavior and build resilience.

This session will focus on the motor development, positioning, the impact of tone on positioning and development, and how to use the home environment to address the specific needs of each infant. The goals of the session are to identify the type and characteristics of tone and related diagnoses and to understand the impact of tone on positioning, handling of each child, and on motor development milestones (strength, reflexes, and head control).

This session will share strategies and techniques to use with children who present with decreased oral intake and feeding problems such as gagging, choking, and difficulty with swallowing.

This session will present the findings of a home-early intervention partnership with parents and teachers of children in a migrant Head Start program. A journaling approach (SALSA) was used to stimulate oral language and emergent literacy skills in Spanish-speaking children of migrant farmers. Implications for the effectiveness of using this method with other multicultural populations will also be discussed. Participants will also learn of special considerations for working with families in which the parents and children are English Language Learners (ELLs).

The presentation will remind and/or raise awareness of what families deal with emotionally, financially, and physically when their medically fragile infants and toddlers are hospitalized, discharged, and begin the transition to care at home. The presentation will discuss post-procedure feeding issues. Participants will have the opportunity to: increase understanding of the patient’s and family’s hospital experience, define the emotional and tangible needs of patients and families when discharged home (using the feeding issue as an illustration), and barriers or problems that often occur. Participants will develop a “tool kit” of skills and resources that might assist intervention with the parents.

The purpose of this session is to share the findings from an Early On-funded research project that included practitioners’ experiences, insights, challenges, and recommendations about services for infants and toddlers placed in foster care. The presentation and interactive dialogue will explore the similarities and differences of Early On services for these infants and toddlers throughout the state and innovative opportunities for enhancing collaborative best practices for serving infants and toddlers, foster parents, and birth parents.

The purpose of this session is to describe and discuss the development of language beginning with the infant’s first communication intent to the older toddler’s ability to understand and express ideas and feelings using words. This presentation will look at language from two levels, the receptive and the expressive, and support the assessment of functional language.

Project LAUNCH (Linking Actions for Unmet Needs in Children’s Health) is a federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)-funded grant promoting the wellness of young children from birth to eight years of age by addressing the physical, emotional, social, cognitive, and behavioral aspects of development. The state is working in partnership with its community partner, Saginaw county, to implement several evidence-based practices. LAUNCH seeks to infuse social/emotional health into physical health and other home visitation models. The model also promotes healthy, stable, safe and supportive families and communities.

During this workshop we will discuss factors that influence challenging toddler behaviors and how our understanding of these factors can be used to develop appropriate strategies to prevent the behavior and respond when the behavior occurs.

Explore tools and strategies that will foster language and literacy development in the critical years of birth to three. Low tech to high tech supports and activities can help build language skills and a basis for life-long literacy skills. Discover, see, touch, and feel hands-on materials, visual supports, activities, and technology supports, embedded into everyday routines. Leave with an understanding and framework for using supports, creating and utilizing multi-sensory tools, and new ideas for immediate use to support language.

This workshop will provide skills for enriching a child’s language development by increasing vocabulary and building self-confidence through the use of signing. This presentation will feature the research-based Baby Signs^® Program, the experiences of families and professionals, and the application for children with and without delays. Participants will leave this session with an understanding of how signing can enhance the parent-child relationship and the ability to teach caregivers the basics of signing with their children.

This session will present the findings of a home-early intervention partnership with parents and teachers of children in a migrant Head Start program. A journaling approach (SALSA) was used to stimulate oral language and emergent literacy skills in Spanish-speaking children of migrant farmers. Implications for the effectiveness of using this method with other multicultural populations will also be discussed. Participants will also learn of special considerations for working with families in which the parents and children are English Language Learners (ELLs).

The presentation will remind and/or raise awareness of what families deal with emotionally, financially, and physically when their medically fragile infants and toddlers are hospitalized, discharged, and begin the transition to care at home. The presentation will discuss post-procedure feeding issues. Participants will have the opportunity to: increase understanding of the patient’s and family’s hospital experience, define the emotional and tangible needs of patients and families when discharged home (using the feeding issue as an illustration), and barriers or problems that often occur. Participants will develop a “tool kit” of skills and resources that might assist intervention with the parents.

The purpose of this session is to share the findings from an Early On-funded research project that included practitioners’ experiences, insights, challenges, and recommendations about services for infants and toddlers placed in foster care. The presentation and interactive dialogue will explore the similarities and differences of Early On services for these infants and toddlers throughout the state and innovative opportunities for enhancing collaborative best practices for serving infants and toddlers, foster parents, and birth parents.

The purpose of this session is to describe and discuss the development of language beginning with the infant’s first communication intent to the older toddler’s ability to understand and express ideas and feelings using words. This presentation will look at language from two levels, the receptive and the expressive, and support the assessment of functional language.

Project LAUNCH (Linking Actions for Unmet Needs in Children’s Health) is a federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)-funded grant promoting the wellness of young children from birth to eight years of age by addressing the physical, emotional, social, cognitive, and behavioral aspects of development. The state is working in partnership with its community partner, Saginaw county, to implement several evidence-based practices. LAUNCH seeks to infuse social/emotional health into physical health and other home visitation models. The model also promotes healthy, stable, safe and supportive families and communities.

During this workshop we will discuss factors that influence challenging toddler behaviors and how our understanding of these factors can be used to develop appropriate strategies to prevent the behavior and respond when the behavior occurs.

Explore tools and strategies that will foster language and literacy development in the critical years of birth to three. Low tech to high tech supports and activities can help build language skills and a basis for life-long literacy skills. Discover, see, touch, and feel hands-on materials, visual supports, activities, and technology supports, embedded into everyday routines. Leave with an understanding and framework for using supports, creating and utilizing multi-sensory tools, and new ideas for immediate use to support language.

This workshop will provide skills for enriching a child’s language development by increasing vocabulary and building self-confidence through the use of signing. This presentation will feature the research-based Baby Signs^® Program, the experiences of families and professionals, and the application for children with and without delays. Participants will leave this session with an understanding of how signing can enhance the parent-child relationship and the ability to teach caregivers the basics of signing with their children.

This workshop is intended to support staff that work with infants and toddlers who are either at risk for communication delays and/or are identified with communication delays. Participants in the session will review communication milestones from birth to age three, explore some contributing causes of communication disorders, learn when to intervene, explore how to use speech therapists through a consultative model, and learn and practice specific strategies to teach/coach parents to facilitate communication development in their children.

Service providers will benefit by gaining a deeper understanding of the connection between brain function and relational connection. Participants will learn concrete strategies to promote healthy relationships and brain development, drawing from the strength-based model of the Nurtured Heart Approach.

In this interactive, informative session, participants will understand the symptoms and implications of compassion fatigue as distinguished from burnout. Participants will be able to identify common coping mechanisms related to compassion fatigue. They will also be able to understand personal, interpersonal, and organizational strategies for combating compassion fatigue to enhance their work with infants and families.

This presentation will identify early signs of autism and related challenges for infants and toddlers. Participants will learn basic strategies to facilitate relationships for infants and toddlers with social and emotional developmental risk factors. They will learn to identify resources for support in facilitating attachment for infants and toddlers with social and emotional developmental risk factors.

This session will focus on how attachment develops and the classifications of secure and insecure patterns of attachment. The presenters will address how a growing attachment can be more difficult when a very young child has developmental challenges. Ways to support growing attachments will be explored.

Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a breakdown in the transmission of messages from the brain to the muscles in the jaw, cheeks, lips, tongue, and palate. Children with CAS are often reported to have coexisting conditions such as oral apraxia, oral-motor hypotonia, sensory integration dysfunction and limb apraxia. A multimodal approach to facilitate speech and expressive language skills will be outlined. The use of gross motor, fine motor, and sensory integration skills as a way of facilitating speech and expressive language skills will be discussed.

Reflective supervision or consultation (RS/C) can greatly improve the quality of services provided in any early childhood program. This session is intended for early childhood program supervisors or team leaders with supervisory responsibility. One key benefit of RS/C is increasing job satisfaction leading to job retention. Decisions that an agency must make when implementing RS/C will also be discussed. A demonstration of RS/C will be provided.