Parent, Infant, and Early Childhood
We work to address the social and emotional development and mental health needs of infants and very young children through supporting parents and caregivers, and through training the workforce who work with very young children. Our Parent, Infant, and Early Childhood (PIEC) team supports workforce development by providing high quality, relevant, and translational training and coaching, technical assistance, facilitation, consulting, implementation support, and research and evaluation. We also provide policy analysis, systems design and financing, data-driven strategic planning, and quality improvement for systems and programs serving young children and their families.
Our team is deeply involved in the promotion, implementation, and evaluation of community-driven, evidence-based practices that have demonstrated success in supporting the social and emotional needs of infants and very young children as well as their families. We have experience with and expertise in the following models and programs:
- Pyramid Model for Social Emotional Competence
- Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation
- Facilitating Attuned iNteractions
- Screening, Brief Intervention and Treatment
- Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up Model
- Child-Parent Psychotherapy
- Circle of Security
- Chicago Parent Program
- Parent Child Interaction Therapy
- Wrap-Around Service
- Multisystemic Therapy
- Functional Family Therapy
- Nurturing Parenting Program
Our work is grounded in equity informed, developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive, and trauma informed practices ensuring that the stressors that impact the mental health of families, including racism and poverty, are carefully considered in our work.
Our team has an extensive profile of projects that focus on improving the amount and quality of infant and mental health services across a variety of settings including childcare, pediatrics, among incarcerated parent populations, with substance use and mental health centers, and with agencies serving homeless and housing unstable youth. We have experience working within systems of care on efforts to develop robust service arrays that are informed by the needs of infants, toddlers, and families, as well as the elevation of family voice.
Highlighted Resources
Our new podcast highlights the story of Victoria Gray and her family navigating child welfare and becoming advocates for kinship care. Listen here!
Current & Recent Projects
Family Attachment-Focused Services, Treatment & Training
The Family Attachment-Focused Services, Treatment & Training (FASTT) program, developed in partnership with Adventist HealthCare’s Lourie Center for Children's Social & Emotional Wellness, is designed to increase access to critical early childhood mental healthcare by supporting workforce development in the field. More trained professionals will make it possible to serve more at-risk children and families, improve the quality of care and reduce assessment wait times for access to services. The PIEC team is supporting FASST as the evaluation lead for the project and by contributing to workforce development through training and coaching in the Early Childhood Service Intensity Instrument (ECSII), Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT), and Facilitating Attuned iNteractions (FAN).
Kennedy Krieger’s PACT Pyramid Model Implementation Project
This project supports program-wide implementation of the Pyramid Model for Social Emotional Competence within a demonstration site for special-needs and special education preschool, childcare and Early Head Start service delivery.
Maryland Cares
In partnership with the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, we received funding from the Maryland State Department of Education’s Division of Early Childhood to develop and disseminate a Pyramid Model Practice Guide to support early care and education providers to deepen their Pyramid Model practices with concrete guidance and supports, available in English and Spanish. This grant allowed our team to develop and disseminate a Positive Solutions for Families Facilitator Support Guide with resources and tools to Extend Conversations with Families around their routines and interactions with their child(ren) as well as supporting their own parenting stress and family needs.
UConn & Connecticut Office of Early Childhood Partnership
PIEC joined the existing Connecticut Office of Early Childhood (OEC)—UCONN Partnership in 2023. In 2024, by contributing expertise that closely aligns with the work and goals of the OEC, the PIEC team was able to significantly increase the scope of work and contribute to a range of agency-wide efforts to support children, families, and the early care and education workforce in the state of Connecticut, including:
- Supporting Pyramid Model implementation and ensuring high quality evaluation of the Pyramid Model activities consistent with implementation science principles and data collection tools and processes.
- Evaluating OEC's nine Behavioral Health Initiatives, with a focus on highlighting strengths of the current data systems, as well as proactively identifying opportunities for expansion to best serve the workforce with infant mental health principles.
- Conducting Market Rate Survey to inform childcare provider payment rates for the state, and in compliance with federal requirements, create the Narrow Cost Analysis to further inform provider payment rates and rate setting for the state.
Learn more about the partnership in this UConn Today story.
Pyramid Model Practices Within Early Intervention
The PIEC Team received funding from the Maryland State Department of Education’s Division of Early Intervention and Special Education to serve as subject matter experts supporting and evaluating implementation of Pyramid Model Practices within Part C Early Intervention Services within the four jurisdictions currently involved with the Maryland State Systemic Improvement Plan grant.
TREE & TREEHOUSE
TREE (Teaching, Reading, Engaging, and Encouraging) is a coaching program, created by members of the Maryland Chapter Academy of Pediatrics for pediatric providers that teaches them how to promote positive parent-child interactions during well-child visits. TREEHOUSE is a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) funded, telehealth, version of TREE funded from 2021 to 2026.
Recent Publications
Lawrence, S.E., Candelaria, M., Isiminger, A., Hutchison, H., Bhandari, S., Mukherjee, B., Buch, H., Polar, J., & Gould-Kabler, C. (2024). PA #23-205 Legislative Request: Final Report. Home visiting, childcare, family resource center, and healthcare assets within “high poverty, low opportunity” communities in Connecticut. Prepared by the University of Connecticut School of Social Work as part of the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood Partnership.
Candelaria, M. & Feigelman, S. (2024). Chapter 18: Developmental and Behavioral Theories, In R. Kliegman & J. W. Geme (Ed). Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics, 2-Volume Set, Twenty-Second Edition. Elsevier, Inc.
Finigan-Carr, N., Candelaria, M., Sweeney Wasserman. (2023). Child and Family-Serving Systems: A Compendium of Policy and Practice, Volume III: Approaches to Family and Child Support and Sustainability. What Works When Supporting Expectant and Parenting Youth and Their Children.
Kohn, B. H., Cui, Z., Candelaria, M. A., Buckingham-Howes, S., Black, M. M., & Riggins, T. (2023). Early emotional caregiving environment and associations with memory performance and hippocampal volume in adolescents with prenatal drug exposure. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 17, 1238172–1238172. DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1238172
Candelaria, M., Tellerman, K., Wilms-Floet, A., & Whitty, H. (2022). The TREEHOUSE Project: promoting early childhood development and parent-child interaction via telehealth in pediatrics. ZERO TO THREE Journal, Invited Submission.
Candelaria, M., Afkinich, J., Sweeney, K., Latta, L., Kane, A. (2022). Workforce Development Needs to Address Early Childhood Mental Health within the Childcare and Early School Years Setting. Perspectives in Early Childhood Psychology and Education – Special Issue.
Candelaria, M., Latta, L., Afkinich, J., Sweeney Wasserman, K., Kane, A., Shivers, E., & Gal-Szabo, D. (2021). Maryland’s infant and early childhood mental health consultation equity efforts, Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, DOI: 10.1080/15313204.2021.2001403
Afkinich, J., Torres, J., Latta, L., Sweeney Wasserman, K., Endy, K., & Candelaria, M. (2021). “Needed now more than ever”: Infant and early childhood mental health consultation in an unprecedented time. ZERO TO THREE Journal, 41(4), 26–33
Upcoming Books & Chapters
Uniting Infant Mental Health and The Pyramid Model: Connecting Principles and Practices to Improve Outcomes, edited by Lana Nenide, Kate Sweeney, Gerald Costa, Neal Horen and Rob Corso is scheduled to be published by Brookes Publishing in 2025. The book is designed for the infant and early childhood workforce to support their understand of the integration of these two models to support and deepen their work with young children and their families.
Kate Sweeney and Margo Candelaria, co-Directors of our PIEC team, have two chapters within this volume, the first on Data Informed Decision Making within the many layers of this work, and the second on Family Coaching within Part C Early Intervention Services, detailing how Pyramid Model supports the practices of early intervention providers.