Seven New Touchpoints Training Sites Join the BTC Learning Network

The Brazelton Touchpoints Center Learning Network (BTCLN) has welcomed seven new Touchpoints Training Sites this year. Touchpoints Training Sites are organizations or systems of care that BTC prepares to deliver Touchpoints training and mentoring in their own communities to professionals in early childhood care and education, early intervention, child welfare, home visiting, perinatal and pediatric health, mental health, public libraries, and social services.

The BTCLN currently includes 59 training sites across the country and in Canada, Italy, Portugal, and Singapore. Our new training sites in 2023 are:

• Aspire Developmental Services in Lynn, Mass., a community-based nonprofit organization that provides early intervention services to children and families
• Hull Services in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, a community-based organization that delivers professional training and workshops focused on effective behavioral and mental health treatment and support for children and their families
• Institute for Applied Behavior Analysis (IABA) in Brea, Calif., which supports individuals with autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities
• Maine Department of Education’s Child Development Services, which provides early intervention and special education services for eligible children from birth through age 5 and their families
• Massachusetts Library System, a state-supported collaborative that fosters cooperation, communication, innovation, and sharing among 1,600 member libraries
• The Center for Great Expectations in Somerset, NJ, a community-based non-profit organization that provides dignified and comprehensive care to pregnant or parenting individuals in an effort to break the generational cycle of abuse, homelessness, and substance use.
• Wicoie Nandagikendan Urban Immersion Program in Minneapolis, Minn., which provides high-quality preschool Ojibwe and Dakota language immersion to urban families in the Twin Cities area

“BTC’s Touchpoints Training Sites help bring Dr. T. Berry Brazelton’s strengths-based approach to child development and family engagement to diverse communities across the country and around the world,” says Mindy May, BTC’s Director of Professional Development. “By training providers in these communities in Touchpoints, these sites help create systems of care that provide developmental, relational, and deeply respectful strengths-based services to tens of thousands of children, parents, and families each year.”

Benefits of becoming a Touchpoints Training Site

Research over more than two decades has shown benefits to organizations, families, and children when leadership and program staff are trained in Touchpoints and become Touchpoints-informed practitioners. These include:

• enhanced social and emotional competence in children
• improved parent-child interactions
• reduced parental stress
• improved parent-provider relationships
• increased provider knowledge of child development and relational skills
• improved relationships among staff
• higher staff retention rates
• better staff wellbeing
• improved organizational climate

To become a Touchpoints Training Site, organizations commit to a strategic planning process with BTC staff that surfaces the organization’s strengths, gaps in knowledge and skills, and goals for professional practice and family and child well-being. Organizations then identify a training team of at least three people who participate in an intensive Touchpoints Train the Trainer program, which includes one year of facilitation support, coaching, and technical assistance with BTC site mentor. Following that first year of intensive training team support, training sites renew their BTC Learning Network membership each year and continue to receive ongoing mentoring, strategic planning and implementation support, Touchpoints facilitator professional development, and access to the BTCLN community.

Interested in learning more about our Touchpoints Training Sites, and how to become a site?

Contact our Senior Training Site Network Coordinator, Mai Nguyen-Kim, today to schedule a conversation!