Vision
Healthy minds from the beginning.
Values
- Sharing knowledge to build capacity and promote scientific inquiry.
- Leadership through advocacy, resource development, and informing promising practices.
- Understanding guided by science and the experience and wisdom of others.
- Equity, diversity and inclusivity as cornerstones for building upon community strengths.
- Relationships and collaboration as the foundation for all that we do.
Activities
- Designing and running innovative educational opportunities for service providers from different disciplines.
- Offering a Ontario College Graduate Certificate in Infant and Early Child Mental Health in collaboration with Seneca College
- Providing information on infant development, research, interventions, and resources for infants and families.
- Developing videos and other teaching materials and information on infant development and parent-child relationships.
- Providing web-based information on infant mental health and the activities of IMHP.
- Establishing and supporting creative, cross-sectoral networks.
- Facilitating initiatives that raise awareness of gaps in services, and advocating for change in policy, funding and service delivery.
- Serving as a resource for information on programs and resources for infant and their families.
KEY Values & Beliefs
- The first three years of life have a unique and formative impact on development, relationships and functioning throughout life.
- Service providers require a specific knowledge and skill base to provide care in the area of infant and early childhood mental health (i.e. prenatal to 60 months/ 5 years.)
- Many adverse outcomes can be prevented when parents and other caregivers are provided with support that enables them to be optimally responsive to their infants and young children.
- As families have the central role in the lives of their children, it is essential to collaborate with families, to build on their strengths and to reduce their risks.
- Services must be sensitive to the diverse needs and coping styles of families from varying cultural and socio-economic backgrounds and to infants and parents who have diverse health and developmental needs.