This year marks the 16th annual Early Head Start and Infant Toddler Conference, which aims to help inform and network professionals in the early head start, child care, health, mental health, early intervention and child welfare fields.
Early Head Start conference promotes learning, networking
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This year marks the 16th annual Early Head Start and Infant Toddler Conference, which aims to help inform and network professionals in the early head start, child care, health, mental health, early intervention and child welfare fields.
The conference will take place at the DoubleTree by Hilton on Northeast Multnomah Street July 29–31.
Expected attendance is around 300, with attendees coming from all over the Pacific Northwest and even overseas. The costs of the conference have been covered by a fee-for-service payment model established in 2003.
“Our focus is to help improve the capacity of programs to serve children and families,” said Mary Foltz, the conference chair and senior Early Head Start consultant at Portland State’s Early Childhood Training Center.
In light of a recent research study led by Beth Green, director of early childhood and family support research at PSU, this year is said to be more informative than previous years.
Although the results of the study are not formally on the agenda at this year’s conference, they will be presented at the American Psychological Association Convention later in August.
Based on data gathered from a longitudinal study over 13 years, Green and fellow researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School found that EHS child participants are at a lower risk for child abuse than their peers.
This study is the first of its kind to prove a positive correlation between access to EHS services and child maltreatment prevention.
Green commented that having a well-rounded system in place is key with programs like EHS.
“The effective [programs] share with EHS things like skilled and well-trained interventionists, frequent contact with families and children, strength-based approaches to working with families that are individualized and use of effective curricula for helping parents improve their parenting skills,” Green said.
Green explained that the effects attributed to early childhood programs often don’t show up until later in life.
“That’s what we see with this study, in fact—the reduction in maltreatment wasn’t pronounced until children reached age 5 or 6,” Green said.
As for how this research will impact EHS program funding, Foltz said it certainly “strengthens the case.”
EHS, a primarily federally funded program, aids families that fall between the categories of prenatal and with a child up to the age of 3. The program links families with needed medical, mental health, nutrition and education services.
Green has been working on this program evaluation since 1994, when PSU became involved with the EHS program.
