EIEC Webinar: Fussy Baby Network Approach to Family Engagement

Monday, September 24, 2012
4:00pm - 5:00pm
Location: webinar

Developed by the Erikson Institute Fussy Baby Network, this webinar focused on a way of engaging with parents around their urgent concerns about their child while building longer-term parenting capacities such as confidence in themselves and in their knowledge of their child. The approach helps practitioners read the parent's verbal and affective cues and match five intervention processes to what the parent is showing that he or she can most use in the moment: empathic inquiry to help parents with feelings, mindful self-regulation to help staff and families stay calm in stressful situations, collaborative exploration to help parents and professionals think together about the child's needs, capacity building to help parents do new things to help their child, and integration to help parents reflect and build a coherent narrative around stressful experience mindful self-regulation. This model is in use in the Fussy Baby National Network and is being infused into home visiting programs across the country. It has been shown to be helpful in interdisciplinary training, particularly with pediatricians, who report that the approach helps them stay in the "hard places" longer and understand and respond to the parent's concerns more fully. The webinar will explore its application to Part C Early Intervention.

Presenter

Linda Gilkerson, PhD: Professor and Executive Director, Fussy Baby Network, Erikson Institute