Giving Every New Baby (and Parent) a Voice
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We offer:

*Semi-annual 2-day trainings  in Community-Based Parent-Infant Relationship Support

*A community of practice with regular group discussions around clinical applications of infant mental health concepts

*Support in infant and early childhood mental health endorsement®

Register for our next training -February 2022

We are proud to announce our next training! We are moving forward and moving north as the project expands to Maine!

register Here
 

Our Mission

The Hello it’s Me Project aims to engage communities around promoting safe, trusting parent-infant relationships. It shines a spotlight on the tremendous capacity for connection babies have when they enter the world, each with their unique way of communicating, while highlighting the need to support caregivers, enlisting their natural expertise during this major and often disorganizing transition to parenthood.

With the goal of building an infant mental health workforce, we bring together a broad variety of practitioners who interface with parents and infants to learn about how to best support these tender new relationships. Participants include peer recovery coaches, pediatricians, maternity nurses, home visitors, lactation consultants, early intervention specialists, early childhood educators, mental health professionals, and a range of others. We integrate contemporary research and knowledge with frontline clinical experience.

 

In a three-tiered parallel process we support relationships among practitioners, between practitioner and parents, and between parents and infants in the service of lifelong physical and emotional health and wellbeing.

 
 

The amazing newborn

 

INTERACTION

  • The interaction of genes and experience shapes the developing brain

COMMUNITY

  • Investing in parents and infants can help grow healthy brains, healthy relationships, and healthy communities

 

Our Partners

MILLTOWN CAPITAL

Under the leadership of Pittsfield native David Mixer, this venture capital firm is investing in the program to promote healthy parent-infant relationships from birth.

We have received signifcant funding from the Boston-based John and Geraldine Weil Memorial Foundation


We invite a broad range of practitioners who work with parents and infants to join our project. Pediatricians, hospitalists, early intervention specialists, psychotherapists, and early childhood educators are among the many groups who have joined our efforts. Recognizing critical role of home visiting in promoting health parent-infant relationships the trainings are offered to Healthy Families, Pediatric Development Center, and Parents as Teachers, and Berkshire Nursing Families. Physicians, maternity nurses, and occupational therapists from Berkshire Medical Center participate in the trainings. Recovery coaches in FIRST (Families In Recovery SupporT) Steps Together, a peer recovery and parenting support program for pregnant and parenting women with current or past opioid use disorder, attend the trainings.

 
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“To build a “trauma-informed community” start with babies”

Claudia M. Gold, MD / Read Full Article

 

 
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Claudia M. Gold MD is a pediatrician and writer who has practiced general and behavioral pediatrics for 25 years, and currently specializes in early childhood mental health.

Dr. Gold is on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Boston Infant-Parent Mental Health program, the Brazelton Institute, and the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute

Her new book The Power of Discord: Why the Ups and Downs of Relationships are the Secret to Building Intimacy, Resilience, and Trust co-authored with developmental psychologist Ed Tronick, was released June 2nd, 2020.

Dr. Gold's book  The Developmental Science of Early Childhood: Clinical Applications of Infant Mental Health Concepts From Infancy Through Adolescence (W.W. Norton & Co) February, 2017 serves as the main text for the Hello It’s Me Project trainings.

She is also the author of The Silenced Child: From Labels, Medications, and Quick-Fix Solutions to Listening, Growth, and Lifelong Resilience and Keeping Your Child in Mind: Overcoming Defiance, Tantrums, and other Everyday Behavior Problems by Seeing the World through Your Child’s Eyes.