The Center for Excellence in Immigrant Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health

Our comprehensive training offers infant and early childhood providers foundational knowledge and practical tools for identifying and uplifting the sources of strength within undocumented and mixed-status immigrant families while supporting them in addressing the impact of immigration policies and other sources of stress and secondary adversities on these families. Participants examine the historical and socio-political context of immigration, the traumatic impact of family separation threats and actual separations, and their effects on child development.

Our signature training focuses on creating sanctuaries-healing-centered physical and emotional spaces across diverse settings including childcare centers, home visiting programs, early intervention services, pediatric practices, and community mental health organizations. Providers learn to implement the BMC/CEIIECMH family preparedness plan, an essential tool that supports immigrant families facing potential separation.

Using trauma-informed, linguistically and socio-culturally responsive, and developmentally appropriate approaches that center racial equity, participants develop skills to build sanctuary practices and guide families through legal considerations for caregiver selection, communication with children, and preservation of family information.

Participants cultivate competencies in critical self-reflection, healing-centered care, and developmentally informed tools that enhance safety, support affect regulation, and identify and build power within both immigrant families and the providers serving them.

The training additionally addresses how the intersection of provider identity, positionality, organizational and systemic inequities relate to primary and secondary traumatic stress in the workforce, offering protective measures grounded in liberatory and antiracist frameworks. These approaches operate at both organizational and individual levels to advance workforce well-being and sustainable practice transformation.

Training and Consultation Modalities

• Introduction training: Minimum 1.5 hours recommended
• Full day or multi-day trainings: Vary in length and depth
• Communities of practice / learning collaboratives: Six to 12 months of didactic/learning sessions interspersed with reflective group consultation. Focus on group learning, mutual peer support, sharing resources, skills practice, and practice change. 

Our comprehensive training in this area will increase participants' understanding of reflective supervision, consultation, and practice (RSC) as a means to promote diversity-informed practice. The workshop will define and differentiate the secondary effects of the work, such as secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, and burnout from an intersectional lens, and explore the relationship between self-awareness, critical self-reflection, and diversity-informed reflective supervision, consultation, and practice. Diversity-informed reflective supervision and practice and radical healing are offered as healing-centered frameworks and strategies to promote self-transformation, practice transformation, and increase buffers against the effects of the work. This training will utilize a combination of didactic and interactive modalities, including case-based learning, to integrate theory into practice. It is offered in different modalities according to the needs and resources of organizations, teams and individuals:

Training and Consultation Modalities

• Introduction training: Minimum 1.5 hours recommended
• Communities of practice / learning collaboratives: Six to 12 months of didactic/learning sessions interspersed with reflective group consultation. Focus on group learning, mutual peer support, sharing resources, skills practice, and practice change.
• Group diversity-informed, healing-centered RSC: For practitioners, program leaders, supervisors
• Individual diversity-informed, healing-centered RSC: For practitioners, program leaders, supervisors 

Beyond our two signature trainings, our team can tailor training content for your professional development needs. Our areas of expertise include:

Core Concepts

• Family preparedness planning  
• Understanding interlocking systems of oppression and their impact in systems, families, and the workforce
• Immigration, trauma, and loss

Working with Families

• Development, attachment, trauma, and loss: socio-cultural and linguistic considerations in the assessment and treatment of young children in Latin American immigrant families  
• Serving undocumented and mixed-status children and families
• Serving Latin American children and families

Workforce Support

• Diversity- and trauma-informed approaches for IECMH providers working with immigrant pregnant individuals and families with children ages zero to five
• Diversity-informed, healing-centered reflective practice and supervision, including training and workforce preservation, healing, and mitigating secondary traumatic stress (STS)
• Addressing trauma, bilingualism, and linguicism in the early childhood workforce serving children ages zero to five in Spanish-speaking families