2019 Early On Conference: Learn Big, Care Boldly, Pass It On! - FULL

Kelly Jandernoa is an inspirational speaker, an oncology nurse, a spouse to Carl, and mother to Tommy, Samantha, and Audrey. She is co-founder of the Red Glasses Movement (RGM), an organization started in honor of her daughter Audrey Louise who died suddenly in 2018. Audrey was born with Down syndrome and a congenital heart defect, but these were not the only things that defined her. Audrey was defined by her bright Red Glasses, her contagious smile, and lack of inhibitions. The RGM is Audrey’s living legacy and has distributed over 15,000 Red Glasses worldwide. Kelly’s presentation tells the story of Audrey’s life, the RGM, and the parallels that exist between them. She will explain the mission of RGM and how each of us can live boldly, love big, and pass it on in our daily life to make a difference for ourselves and others.

This session has two purposes; to assist home-based service providers in gaining a deeper understanding of early literacy practices, and to help them support families in promoting his/her child’s early language and literacy development and build their child's brain. Access to free language and literacy resources will be provided.

This session will provide early interventionists with resources and tools to support social-emotional development in the natural environment. Participants will leave the session with information on the basics of responsive parenting and child temperaments. They will be able to implement strategies on identifying and teaching emotions and assisting families on how to manage the big emotions of little people.

This session will target ISD administrators and service providers and their role as it relates to in Medicaid School-Based Services (SBS). They will help administrators and providers identify the basic components of Medicaid SBS and improve knowledge and skills when billing for services. The presenters will address any Medicaid updates as they pertain to Early On.

This interactive workshop will provide home visitors with an opportunity to explore and acknowledge implicit bias in a safe environment. Through our exploration, home visitors will learn ways to prevent their own implicit bias from impacting their work with families. Using that awareness, home visitors will be empowered to further develop healthy, authentic relationships with families.

This experiential workshop is designed to support early interventionists who are interested in implementing a group-based program with an emphasis on music, routine, and child-caregiver engagement. Current research and clinical evidence will be used as a framework as the presenters and workshop participants create and run through a well-rounded lesson plan that emphasizes the importance of child-caregiver connection and family coaching. This lesson plan will be designed for young children at a variety of developmental skill levels. We invite you to enjoy the fun that goes along with music and early intervention; come sing, play, and learn with us!

Research indicates a rise in motor delays, torticollis/plagiocephaly since implementation of the Safe to Sleep campaign. This workshop will help families and providers working with young children identify and understand these unintended changes, recognize and implement effective Tummy Time and learn strategies to promote typical development within daily routines.

This workshop presents a view into everyday practice based on findings from a recent research study of early intervention services in Michigan. Using wearable video cameras, service providers recorded their home visits; videos were then analyzed for the routines/contexts utilized throughout the visit, as well as parental role and engagement. Implications and opportunities for practice will be discussed.

This presentation will review guidelines outlined by Rush and Shelden regarding joint visits. Individuals attending this presentation will then receive ideas and tools to support the implementation of joint visits.

This presentation will highlight information on child welfare field work, give insight relative to families who are involved in the child welfare system, provide child welfare policy changes that impact working with families relative to Early On, and it will update how all these items influence collaboration between MDHHS and Early On, allowing for an opportunity to enhance collaboration and engagement when working with vulnerable families.

This presentation highlights opportunities for learning and research through the Early On Center for Higher Education faculty grant. An overview of Brazelton Touchpoints training opportunity as a result of this grant is provided, as well as lessons learned while facilitating a multi-faceted training program for professionals and university students. Participants are encouraged to ponder various research questions, scenarios, and possibilities throughout this session to support their teaching, scholarly endeavors, and service interests.

The outdoors is a rich arena for family activities and early intervention with young children that provides many well-established benefits for physical and social-emotional health. This presentation will provide well-documented research on the benefits of nature to young children and suggest a way to blend nature and early intervention work.

Most adults view learning vocabulary as a skill that happens naturally. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This session will allow participants to experience what a child goes through as he listens to the "sounds" (i.e., words) of his world and learns to make connections between those sounds and the objects and actions found in his environment(s).

The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study confirms with scientific evidence that adverse childhood experiences have an impact on health, behavior, and productivity throughout the life course. However, there are interventions that a caring community can implement to reduce the impact of ACEs while society works to eliminate the root causes of adversity. The film “Resilience” is part of this workshop.

This presentation will provide home visitors with strategies to successfully support families during the mealtime routine, so they can facilitate eating, self-feeding, language and social skills with their children. Evidence-based information will be shared to support early interventionists in their role as facilitators of growth, for successful family outcomes.

This workshop will provide a template to dance the delicate dance of supporting a family on an early autism journey. Information includes resources to connect with families, evidence-based practices, and reflective thinking for caring for ourselves as the bad news bearer.

This workshop is intended for home visitors wanting to learn how to better support family members of children engaging in persistent challenging behavior. Using the PTR-F model, participants will learn about the process of working with the family to develop a vision for improved child and family functioning, assessment of behavior, developing intervention plans with the family, coaching for implementation of selected interventions, and monitoring child progress.

Sometimes when providers see so many children with varying degrees of abilities, it becomes difficult to keep in mind what normal development actually looks like. It can also seem intimidating to identify variations of development outside of your expertise. The presenters will break down typical developmental patterns for you in their areas of expertise so you will feel confident in knowing what a child should be doing in the areas of cognition, communication, fine and gross motor through age 3. Atypical patterns will also be discussed to help providers know when it’s appropriate to bring in a specific discipline for professional opinion and clinical expertise.

Human trafficking is a wildly growing crime - and one that we do not often see the signs of. This session will help shed light on the issue at hand, and how you, as a professional or civilian, can learn how to read the signs and stop the issue before it develops.

Communication partners are vital to the success of communication interventions with children with communication challenges. This session will focus on a research-based strategy, POWR+, to help communication partners provide appropriate supports for children who use AAC. Participants will learn the steps of the strategy through illustrative examples and will have a chance to practice the steps during the session.

Teacher evaluations are required for K-12, however, it has been difficult to translate the various rubrics to staff that work with birth to three. This session will highlight a tool that was developed to support the improvement of staff based upon the key practices of early intervention and the basic elements that are included in the various teacher evaluation tools.

This session will provide information about the basics of social-emotional developmental milestones, how it is connected to all other developmental areas, and strategies to empower families to respond positively to their child’s behaviors.

The MDE has collaborated with stakeholders from across Michigan to build a child-first certification system that prepares effective educators to use differentiated support and meet the needs of the whole child. In this session, presenters will share details about the process and progress of the stakeholder review and revision of the Early Childhood Endorsement into a birth to kindergarten certification.

Home visitors share a unique opportunity with families in our communities. Their ability to visit a family in the home to evaluate several risk and protective factors is vital. With some basic knowledge of lead-based paint and what might be considered a hazard could help protect a child from lead positioning in their home environment.

This session will allow supervisors and staff to look closely at the best practice attitudes, behaviors and elements of reflective supervision (RS). The Reflective Interaction Observation Scale (RIOS) will be used to offer a framework that makes this sometimes elusive relationship for learning accessible as we view recorded RS interaction excerpts. Strategies that support RS and challenges will be discussed.

This workshop will provide a variety of strategies that can be implemented by families of children with multiple disabilities with or without visual impairments to improve children’s functional vision skills. The participants will learn about simple modifications to family’s routine activities and their natural environment that would promote the use of their child’s remaining vision, support their child’s overall development, and enhance their child’s participation in daily family activities.

Professionals working with families will learn how to provide a safe sleep environment for infants. This presentation will provide an overview of the problem of sleep-related infant death in Michigan as well as the 2016 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines for a safe infant sleeping environment that were issued to reduce these deaths. The barriers and challenges to their implementation in the home will also be discussed as well as how to address these challenges. Participants will also learn about available resources to help keep babies sleeping safely.

By participating in this workshop you will gain an understanding of the needs of parents to be effective members of your LICC. This will include tools for assessing your LICC practices for building capacity in parents, as well as the resources available to support and educate parents.

INTELLIGENT LIVES stars three pioneering young American adults with intellectual disabilities - Micah, Naieer, and Naomie - who challenge perceptions of intelligence as they navigate high school, college, and the workforce. Academy Award-winning actor and narrator Chris Cooper contextualizes the lives of these central characters through the emotional personal story of his son Jesse, as the film unpacks the shameful and ongoing track record of intelligence testing in the U.S. INTELLIGENT LIVES challenges what it means to be intelligent, and points to a future in which people of all abilities can fully participate in higher education, meaningful employment and intimate relationships. Come be a part of this exciting film and discussion with Janice Fialka!

The Michigan Department of Education, Office of Great Start/Early Childhood Development and Family Education, is the state lead agency for Early On Michigan. The Office is responsible in administering the Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Act. Noel will provide participants will timely federal and state updates and opportunities, both informing the Early On system and it’s intersection with the Michigan Department of Education’s top priorities.

Dr. Scott Koenigsknecht will kick off Thursday, welcoming participants with an overview of the Office of Great Start, current initiatives for early childhood in Michigan, and discussion about how Early On Michigan fits into the broader early childhood system.

Celena L. Barnes was a devoted wife and mother, a tireless advocate for her daughter with special needs, a committed leader, mentor, inspiration to other families, and overall phenomenal woman. Ms. Barnes was a voice for families of children with special needs, not only in her community, but throughout the state of Michigan and the country. She served as a passionate member of the Wayne County Local Interagency Coordinating Council for Early On, the Wayne County Parent Advisory Committee, a parent alternate for the Michigan Interagency Coordinating Council, a representative on the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council, the Michigan Special Education Advisory Committee, Michigan Family Voices, and the Michigan Alliance for Families. For her many contributions within her community, the state of Michigan and the country, we celebrate her legacy with an award that is presented during each Early On Conference to a family leader who embodies the characteristics that Celena possessed.

Vanessa L. Herrington-Winborne led Michigan’s early intervention system from 1998 to 2018, in her role as State Coordinator for Part C/Early On at the Michigan Department of Education. During her tenure, Vanessa provided strong leadership to improve the system and compassionate support for personnel and the families of infants and toddlers who qualify for Early On. She is a founding member of the Board of Directors for the Early On Michigan Foundation, dedicated to strengthening the fiscal infrastructure for Early On. In her testimony to the House Oversight Committee, Vanessa outlined the need for state investment in Early On to Michigan legislators. Her work significantly contributed to Michigan’s first statewide allocation for Early On in 2018. With warmth, understanding and humor, Vanessa provided guidance and leadership for administrators and personnel responsible for Early On locally, to ensure quality practices in compliance with federal law and state policy. In recognition of her leadership and compassion, the Early On Michigan Foundation is presenting this first award to Vanessa L. Herrington-Winborne, which, in subsequent years will be awarded to individuals who also exemplify qualities of excellence in early intervention.

Participants will leave this session with a deeper understanding of what PLCs are, how they support professional growth, and therefore, child outcomes. Learn the various learning formats that have helped one Early On team build their skills and knowledge across a variety of disciplines. Early On providers and administrators will leave the session with tools to use immediately to begin developing PLCs in their own programs.

Many early intervention providers value the use of family-centered practices, but how are providers in our state defining this approach to services? Participants will learn about how Michigan providers have defined family-centered practices, and how our state’s definition of family-centered practice may be broadening. We will discuss the implications of this broadening definition, including strengths and challenges it may generate. This presentation includes the work of Dr. J. Mitchell Vaterlause.

Is your team ready to dive in with both feet to implement coaching and teaming practices? If yes, your team may benefit from hearing about our journey to utilizing these evidenced based practices. Our team at Early On in Genesee County went from playgroups and toy bags to primary service provider model and total implementation of coaching practices. You will also learn about using mentor coaching to ensure using coaching practices with fidelity.

To support the whole child who is deaf or hard of hearing: Begin with on-target enrollment, add best practices including local community provider support, and you get... the whole ball of wax! State and national research and specific collaborative programs will be shared, in line with the Prenatal-8 initiative ensuring every child is developmentally on-track and reading by grade 3.

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are exceptionally common in society, yet few practitioners in early intervention are FASD-informed. This gap in knowledge affects the long-term outcomes for children with the disorder and their families. Attendees will receive an overview of FASD, including prevalence, child developmental profiles, FASD diagnostics, and long-term outcomes of children with the disorder. Early interventionists are key players in the long-term success of children with an FASD. This session will also help early interventionists with the development of an FASD-informed intervention team, addressing issues such as the recognition of maternal alcohol consumption as a causative factor for child developmental needs, FASD diagnostics, and best practices in caregiver and child interventions from the FASD literature.

Parent training is widely used by providers delivering services to young children, often with variable results. Behavioral Skills Training (BST) is an evidence-based procedure that complements established parent training curricula to improve the training outcomes. The strategies for implementing BST will be discussed, and a demonstration of using BST to teach parenting skills will be provided.

Early On parents receiving information and support on social-emotional development are more likely to report higher levels of knowledge and confidence and use appropriate interactions with their child to promote social-emotional development. These enhanced family outcomes are related to the broader family impact measure, which consists of knowing family rights, effectively communicating children’s needs, and helping children develop and learn.

In this workshop, participants will take time to explore how a caregiving relationship is impacted by trauma - whether it be an event that threatens a young child’s safety or an event that compromises the safety of a caregiver - and how healing the trauma can lead to healing of the caregiving relationship.

In this session, learners will be given an overview of the Michigan Mandatory Special Education (MMSE) guidance that has been released by the MDE. Eligibility categories that will be reviewed include Early Childhood Developmental Delay (ECDD), Speech and Language Impairment (SLI), Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and Other Health Impairment (OHI). Strategies that focus on how practitioners can use the guidance in their daily work will be provided.

This interactive workshop will help participants identify and understand how unconscious bias impacts perceptions and decision making in the workplace. Participants will engage in learning to increase self-awareness and discuss approaches to improve interpersonal relationships across multicultural groups.