Parents, Clinicians and Educators Draw “The Big Picture”

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Picture of Sara L . Henry, MA, LMFT

Sara L . Henry, MALMFT

Par­ents, Clin­i­cians and Edu­ca­tors Draw “The Big Pic­ture” of Children’s Devel­op­men­tal and Men­tal Health, Together!

Recently a client called me from her car to relate two mir­a­cles her daugh­ter achieved on the ride home from our ses­sion together. First, her daugh­ter patiently waited for her mother to fin­ish a 15 minute tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion. Then, after my client rewarded her help­ful daugh­ter with lunch from Chick-fil-A (a favorite!), the daugh­ter rewarded her mother with an even greater mir­a­cle. She, for the first time in her rel­a­tively short life, shared her food (specif­i­cally her fries). My client’s sobs of joy pro­foundly moved me as unmis­tak­able acknowl­edg­ment of the mon­u­men­tal strides she and her daugh­ter had made over the pass­ing months.

Par­ents of chil­dren with spe­cial needs or other behav­ioral health issues pray to expe­ri­ence the kinds of small mir­a­cles that lead to big changes in over­all func­tion­ing that my client and her child expe­ri­enced together. Nor­mally these par­ents must nav­i­gate the health care sys­tem alone and some­how divine how to piece together a patch­work of care for their child.

If you can relate to my client’s story or are inter­ested in learn­ing of a pow­er­fully inno­v­a­tive new frame­work for address­ing behav­ioral issues from infancy to adult­hood you must attend Col­lier Child­care Resources’ (“CCCR”) upcom­ing Third Annual Early Child­hood Con­fer­ence Get the Big Pic­ture: Men­tal Health, Early Inter­ven­tion and Treat­ing the Whole Child, March 27, 2010 from 8am-to-5pm at NCH’s Down­town Cam­pus — Telford Con­fer­ence Cen­ter. (Down­load Con­fer­ence Brochure and/or Con­fer­ence Reg­is­tra­tion Form)

The con­fer­ence will explore a frame­work for deal­ing with men­tal health and behav­ioral issues that calls upon all the health care providers … OTs, PTs, coun­selors, pedi­a­tri­cians, teach­ers, speech pathol­o­gists, neu­rol­o­gists … to con­sult with each other, to put their heads together to think about your child and strate­gize WITH YOU about the best course of action to address your child’s and your family’s needs as you care for your child.

Author, edu­ca­tor and ther­a­pist Con­nie Lil­las, PhD, MFT, RN, the vision­ary co-creator of the Neu­rore­la­tional Frame­work (“NRF”) will be the fea­tured pre­sen­ter at this year’s con­fer­ence. Dr. Lil­las will demon­strate what is pos­si­ble when par­ents, health care pro­fes­sion­als and edu­ca­tors work within a com­mon frame­work that enables them to work together to sup­port a child spe­cial needs or men­tal health chal­lenges to develop his or her full potential.

Dr. Lil­las’ book Infant/Child Men­tal Health, Early Inter­ven­tion, and Relationship-Based Ther­a­pies: A Neu­rore­la­tional Frame­work for Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Prac­tice is rec­om­mended read­ing for pro­fes­sion­als by Dr. T. Berry Brazel­ton, M.D..

The NRF is a frame­work to help health care pro­fes­sion­als and edu­ca­tors work together and work with you, a frame­work informed by neu­ro­science prin­ci­pals, social-emotional devel­op­men­tal mile­stones and the nitty-gritty of real rela­tion­ships. The NRF empow­ers par­ents with a map of the “big pic­ture” of what is going on with their child in his or her brain and how this plays out in the world of rela­tion­ships, stim­u­la­tions and demands.

Dr. Allen S. Weiss, M.D., Pres­i­dent and CEO, NCH Health­care Sys­tems says this year’s con­fer­ence is “[v]itally impor­tant infor­ma­tion for care­givers of chil­dren with devel­op­men­tal and behav­ioral issues.”

The NRF is the cut­ting edge in the field of infant men­tal health. It is a vision of com­pre­hen­sive col­lab­o­ra­tive care for children’s devel­op­men­tal and behav­ioral health. It is a vision that does not belong to one clinic or provider but to a “clinic with­out walls” that includes the author­ity of par­ents as a main fea­ture. It is an inher­ently sen­si­ble vision that finally and fully uti­lizes those who are among the most edu­cated in the field of children’s devel­op­men­tal and behav­ioral health, the par­ents of spe­cial needs chil­dren and chil­dren with men­tal health issues.

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