IMHAANZ is a national charity supporting professionals who work with infants and their families.
NZ TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES
These are NZ-based training opportunities and training programmes which have infant mental health principles at their core.
FAN Training
IMHAANZ delivers FAN Training to groups, teams and services in New Zealand and Australia.
Click here to visit the dedicated webpage about FAN Training for New Zealand and Australia.
Watch, Wait and Wonder® Training
Watch, Wait, and Wonder® (WWW) as researched and manualised was developed in Dunedin, New Zealand by Elisabeth Muir, Angela Stupples, and Denise Guy. This dyadic psychotherapeutic intervention is used with infants and young children from 4 months of age.
It uniquely places the infant/child in an active central role in every therapy session. WWW has an evidence base supporting its capacity to improve the child’s self-regulation, cognitive development and attachment security, and parents’ levels of depression and sense of competency in their parenting.
The Introductory Training is suitable for clinicians working with vulnerable populations in perinatal and infant mental health settings, early intervention practitioners and child protection. A psychotherapy background is useful but not necessary. Professional groups who have trained include Clinical Psychologists, Social Workers, Psychiatrists and Child Psychiatrists, and Child Psychotherapists. Introductory Training is a prerequisite for WWW Intervention Training and Stance Informed WWW Practice.
Trainings take place throughout the year; visit www.watchwaitwonderdownunder.com to find out when the next training is being held or email to enquire: [email protected]
Introduction to Infant Mental Health
The University of Otago runs a distance learning course called Introduction to Infant Mental Health. This has two 4 day block courses in Christchurch at which attendance is compulsory.
Applicants must possess an appropriate professional health qualification and have at least two years postgraduate clinical experience. Full information is available by clicking here.
Infant Mental Health Papers
The University of Auckland offers two papers with an Infant Mental Health focus (PSYCHIAT 771 and 772) within the Postgraduate Diploma of Health Sciences (PGDipHSc).
For more information, take a look at the course handbook at by clicking here.
Newborn Behavioural Observational (NBO) System
The Newborn Behavioural Observational (NBO) system is a structured set of observations designed to help the clinician and parent together, to observe the infant’s behavioural capacities and identify the kind of support the infant needs for his successful growth and development.
A supportive, nurturing relationship that is sensitive and responsive to the infant’s needs optimises neurological and psychological development. There is also a growing body of evidence to show that attachment plays a role in the development of some diseases in adulthood.
The Women’s (Royal Hospital, Victoria) is the official training centre in Australia and New Zealand for the NBO system developed by the Brazelton Institute, Boston (MA, USA).
For more information visit here.
NCAST Parent-Child Interaction (PCI) Feeding and Teaching Scales
The NCAST Parent-Child Interaction (PCI) Feeding and Teaching Scales are valid and reliable assessments for measuring parent-child interaction with an extensive body of research across disciplines, as well as a well-developed set of observable behaviours that describe caregiver/parent child interaction in either a feeding or teaching situation. They have excellent pre and post measures to document intervention effects for clinicians and researchers and scales which have been used in hundreds of studies and published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.
The PCI Scales benefit caregiver/parent-child interaction by giving concrete areas to guide intervention, transforming the provider’s view of the parent-child relationship, and offering the provider a new lens with which to see the strengths and opportunities for growth in the parent-child relationship.
They are suitable for Public Health Nurses, Researchers, Social Workers, Psychologists, Early Intervention Workers, Speech Therapists, Occupational and Physical Therapists, and Infant Mental Health Specialists.
Training is available in Aotearoa from Infant Toddler Specialists Ltd. For further information contact [email protected]
