Infant Toddler Specialists

(RPF) process is a forum for exploring the work, planning for and incorporating new knowledge into practice, and deepening the practitioner’s understanding of reactions, responses, emotions, thoughts and feelings associated with the work. The RPF process strives to enhance the practitioner’s appreciation for relationships as the central component of professional practice in the pēpi - whānau mental health field. The role of Reflective Practice Facilitator is not to recommend or advise courses of action, interventions, or treatments, but rather to support the practitioner in answering her/his own questions about the work while moving toward greater levels of understanding and competence.
We offer individual clinical supervision. We are trained in Neurosequential Model of Reflection and Supervision (NMRS)

Mental Health Consultation is an indirect intervention that pairs experienced mental health professionals with experience, knowledge and skills in Infant, Perinatal and Maternal / Whānau Mental Health and childhood trauma with other providers, in order to promote, and where need be, improve the social, emotional, behavioural and relational health, prevent escalation of challenging behaviours, make referrals for additional assessments and services and to improve outcomes for pēpi / young tamaiki, whānau and staff. This partnership aims at building the capacity of the staff.
Complex Case Consultation is intended to provide a forum for individuals to present a case that is of concern to them, or they feel ‘stuck’, ‘confused’, ‘frustrated’ or feel they are repeating unproductive patterns of service delivery.
Complex Case Consultation will:
Encourage creative thinking, while maintaining a safe approach.
Explore and develop an understanding of the case and its complexities.
Provide co-regulation.
Explore practitioner’s thoughts, feelings, implicit biases, and contribution to the case.
Identify next steps with a clear robust plan.
Promote clear communication.

The NCAST Parent - Child Interaction scales (Feeding & Teaching) assesses parent/caregiver's sensitivity to infant's cues, response to infant's distress, social emotional & cognitive growth fostering and baby's cues and responsiveness to parent/caregiver utilising either a feeding interaction or teaching interaction.  Pivotal to the scales is the understanding of infant states and infant engagement and disengagement cues (subtle and potent).
Careful observations of the caregiver-infant interaction is one of the foundational skills needing in infant mental health.
The Feeding Scale uses a feeding episode to observe the interaction between caregiver and infant. Feeding occurs over 2000 times in the first year of life and provides rich information about the developing caregiver-infant relationship.
The training involves a 3-day (intense) training learning the Feeding Scale and becoming reliable in the scale for use.
The Teaching Scale provides a chance to observe the caregiver teaching the infant / child a new task, introducing a mild stressor into the interaction, which provides the opportunity to observe how the infant and caregiver navigate novelty and challenges during their interaction.
The training involves a 3-day (intense) training learning the Teaching Scale and becoming reliable in the scale for use.

We offer workshops tailored to your organisation, these include (but not limited to):
Pregnancy, Mental Health, Trauma & Wellbeing
Promoting infant-caregiver relationships
Understanding & working with trauma
Understanding infants
Infant Mental Health
Neurodevelopment
Sensory Challenges
We offer presentations tailored to your organisation. Presentations tend to be shorter and take a more didactic approach than our workshops

We are trained through the Child Trauma Academy in the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT)
Complex Case Consultation is intended to provide a forum for individuals to present a case that is of concern to them, or they feel ‘stuck’, ‘confused’, ‘frustrated’ or feel they are repeating unproductive patterns of service delivery.
Complex Case Consultation will:
Encourage creative thinking, while maintaining a safe approach.
Explore and develop an understanding of the case and its complexities.
Provide co-regulation.
Explore practitioner’s thoughts, feelings, implicit biases, and contribution to the case.
Identify next steps with a clear robust plan.
Promote clear communication.