We at MassAIMH are providers and professionals from diverse and varied disciplines, serving young children and families and are dedicated to promoting healthy social and emotional development in the earliest stages and relationships of life.
We represent and invite many different areas of practice; such as early care and education, pediatric health care, early intervention, home visiting, parent and family support, psychology, social work, psychiatry, research and policy, and parenting.
By the end of the first years of life, and with attuned and emotionally healthy caregiving, children will typically establish possibly the most important developmental milestone of their lives: the basic social and emotional capacity for trust in relationships with the people in their lives. This capacity carries the child forward for more likely success in future relationships, and supports the foundation of a child’s capacity for learning across all domains of development in that the health of early emotional experiences plays a crucial role in brain development. Infant mental health refers to this basic social and emotional competence; the capability to experience, self-regulate, and adaptively express a wide variety of emotions, and to use these skills in the service of strong, secure interpersonal relationships and strong learning readiness.
We all recognize that families need and deserve the support necessary in order to be able to nurture their children and we are dedicated to serving that goal. Towards that end, MassAIMH is an organization of providers who recognize the vital importance of the foundational early years of development. Early support for families experiencing multiple stressors can be powerfully effective as preventive emotional health for the whole family system.
Our mission is to promote family and infant and early childhood social and emotional well-being as foundational to development by enhancing and linking specialized training, research, policy, advocacy, and preventive and therapeutic intervention through collaboration across systems, disciplines and providers. We hope you will join us as MassAIMH members in our dedication and endeavors, bring your expertise and interests, and help us to continue our goal in the Commonwealth of enhancing relational health for our youngest and their families.