Babies and children, families and communities do the research on what it takes for them to flourish. Listen with us to what they’ve been learning. Watch a webinar. Check out the Indigenous Early Learning Collaborative. Join the Brazelton Touchpoints Center Learning Network. Join the conversation.
The Brazelton Touchpoints Center (BTC) offers mental health consultation, workshops, and intensive trainings for mental health practitioners and other family-facing professionals and programs supporting everyone’s mental health — in early childhood programs, home visiting programs, and primary care and behavioral health clinics.
Our mental health consultation services and related offerings include:
- Direct infant and early childhood mental health consultation (IECMHC)
- Family Connections model of mental health consultation and professional staff development
- Workshops and intensive trainings — both in person and virtual — for mental health practitioners and other providers
The Touchpoints Approach and our strong commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, belonging, and antiracism (EDIBA) are deeply integrated throughout all our activities. BTC and our mental health–related services and offerings endorse the Irving B. Harris Diversity-Informed Tenets for working with young children and families.
Contact us to bring our offerings to your program, organization, community, state, or Tribe. We can tailor our IECMHC, trainings, and workshops to address your group’s professional development strengths and needs.
Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation
BTC provides prevention-based infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) consultation services to adults who work with infant, toddlers, and preschoolers. The services are offered in a variety of settings, including early education and care programs, Head Start and Early Head Start, home visiting, pediatric offices, and early intervention programs. Services may be offered in person or virtually.
Through relationship-based practices, our IECMH consultants build adult and system capacity and skills to facilitate the healthy social and emotional development of children. Our IECMH consultants partner with program leadership and direct service professionals. Reflective supervision and consultation, a component of our IECMH consultation services, is available for organizations and individuals.
BTC has provided mental health consultation services — on-site and virtually — and reflective supervision and consultation to the following organizations:
- ABCD Head Start (MA)
- Bright Beginnings of United Way (Houston, TX)
- Community Action of Pioneer Valley Head Start and Early Learning Programs (MA)
- Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (MT)
- Cambridge Department of Human Service Programs, Preschool Programs (MA)
- Empower LGA, Inc. (Canton, MA)
- EVA Center (Boston, MA)
- Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (Boston, MA)
- Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi (MI)
- Pokagon Band of Potawatomi (IN, MI)
- Pueblo of Laguna (NM)
- Sisseton Wahpeton-Oyate (SD)
- Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (ND, SD)
- The Children’s Home Society of New Jersey (Trenton, NJ)
- The Dimock Center (Roxbury, MA)
- University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School MCPAP (Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program) for Early Childhood (Worcester, MA)
- Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska
Contact us to learn more about our IECMHC services.
Family Connections: Mental Health Consultation and Professional Staff Development
Family Connections is an evidence-based, system-wide model for mental health consultation and professional development in early education and care, Head Start and Early Head Start, home visiting, and other programs serving young children and their families.
This model:
- Builds professional capacity
- Promotes mental health and social-emotional wellness in young children, their families, and providers
- Deepens professionals’ understanding of families facing depression and other adversities, trauma and trauma-informed care, and resiliency and healing
Family Connections was developed with the support of an Innovation and Improvement Project grant to Boston Children’s Hospital from the Office of Head Start in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Family Connections project was initially launched in 2003 as an initiative to support early childhood programs in their mental health outreach to families facing adversities, particularly parental depression.
The model has evolved into a systemic, preventive approach of embedded infant and early childhood mental health consultation (IECMHC) and staff development. It may work directly at a community level, programmatic level, classroom level, and/or with an individual child and family.
Learn more about Family Connections.
Mental Health–Related Workshops and Trainings
BTC offers virtual and in-person workshops and intensive trainings on various mental health-related topics. While some of these trainings are specifically for mental health practitioners, most were developed for a broad audience of family-facing professionals and organizations. These include:
- Early childhood educators
- Early Intervention and developmental service providers
- Head Start and Early Head Start programs and staff
- Home visitors
- Mental health clinicians
- County, city, state, and federal agencies
- Infant and early childhood mental health networks and organizations
- Nonprofit and community-based service organizations
- Perinatal and pediatric health care providers, clinics, hospitals, and organizations
- Tribal community programs
Visit our Professional Development page for descriptions of the following offerings:
Intensive, multi-day trainings
- Act Early: Partnering with Families on Developmental Screening and Referrals
- Addressing Behaviors That Challenge
- Families in Recovery: Touchpoints in the Context of Substance Use Disorder
- Family Connections Institute: Mental Health Consultation and Professional Staff Development
- Touchpoints for Mental Health Clinicians
- Touchpoints in the Context of Developmental Challenges
Workshops
- Beyond Trauma-Informed Care: A Developmental-Relational Framework for Engaging Adults and Children in Healing and Resilience
- Development is a Journey: A Conversation Roadmap for Talking with Families
- Family Connections: Mental Health and Relationship-Building Workshops for Staff and Families
- Hope in the Face of Adversity: Nurturing the Family in Recovery with Touchpoints
- Supporting Everyone’s Mental Health
- Supporting Social-Emotional Development and Well-Being
Register for upcoming trainings and workshops.
BTC’s Mental Health Team
BTC’s clinical psychologists, social workers, and other mental health practitioners have experience working in community-based and hospital clinical settings, schools, early and special education, home visiting, psychology, neurodevelopment, and social work, with expertise in reflective supervision and consultation, and in trauma and trauma-informed care.
As both direct service providers with on-the-ground experience and skilled trainers, lecturers, researchers, and educators, our Mental Health team members have a deep understanding of and regard for the mental health needs of young children, families, and early childhood professionals. Our goal is to partner with you in a collaborative relationship, working together towards the health and well-being of individuals, families, organizations, and systems.
Meet our Mental Health team.
The Brazelton Touchpoints Center offers mental health consultation, workshops, and intensive trainings for mental health practitioners and other family-facing professionals and programs supporting everyone’s mental health — in early childhood programs, home visiting programs, and primary care and behavioral health clinics.
Get Involved
Seats still available for Touchpoints Training starting September 10!