Women's and Children's Health Network (WCHN), South Australia
The 10 week Certificate in Infant Mental Health runs in Term 1 and Term 3 of every year, each Wednesday afternoon from 3-6 pm. The course is run in the Telehealth facility of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in North Adelaide so that up to 35 students can participate in Adelaide at that site, and up to 3 country sites can also join the course.
At the country facilities, there needs to be a minimum of 6 students to make the group viable. There will be a local facilitator at each local site, who will run the tutorials on infant observation and the other material will be beamed from Adelaide.
Enrolments are encouraged from anyone working with infants and toddlers and/or their families, in particular from childcare, early childhood, CaFHS, WCHN staff, NGOs, CAHMS, private practitioners, child protection or mental health services.
The aims of this course are to:
provide basic knowledge and skills to those who work with infants and their families
improve their sense of confidence and competence in their work, particularly around understanding infant and family emotional needs
enable workers to reflect on how their own views and feelings impact in their work so that they can effectively use themselves in their work
become familiar with infant mental health concepts with access to reading material, and in particular to other people who work in the same area
Course work will include:
basic theories relevant to working with infants and their families, in particular attachment and systems theories
observing an infant or toddler once a week for the duration of the course and writing a diary about the experiences of observation
how to understand what is happening inside an infant and how to best help that infant’s emotional development
how to recognize when things are not going well and what to do in this situation
Reading from the following textbook - Clinical Skills in Infant Mental Health, 2nd Edition (2011) as outlined in the weekly program. The text book can be purchased from all good book stores.
Assessment will be undertaken in the following way:
80% attendance is required
Contribution to small group infant observation group
one 10 minute presentation on a topic relevant to that person’s workplace
Students will be required to successfully complete each of the above assessment requirements.
Faculty will include staff mainly from Women’s and Children’s Health Network who have been working with infants and their families for many years:
Paul Dignam, Mary Farrington, Sharron Hollamby, Penny Kelly, Lynly Mader, Prue McEvoy, Patricia O’Rourke, Ros Powrie, Tracy Semmler-Booth, Mandy Seyfang, Anne Sved Williams, Neil Underwood.
Enrolment information
The course currently costs $500 and each person will receive a Certificate of Infant Mental Health from Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
Enrolments will be accepted from people in order of receipt of full payment and in any case one week prior to commencement of the course. We think this course will be popular so if you are interested, please let us know and/or get your application in.
For details of the cost and instructions on how to enrol please contact Tammy Little at tammy.little@health.sa.gov.au
Contact
We always welcome enquiries, comments, feedback, and suggestions. Please feel free to do that through:
Tammy Little
Tel: (08) 8226 6241
Email: tammy.little@health.sa.gov.au
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