Presenter: Maria St. John, PhD, MFT, IFMH Mentor
Target Audience: Santa Clara County Infant-Family and Early Childhood Mental Health Certificate Program graduates, current participants, and practitioners within the KidConnections Network of Care and Santa Clara County Mental Health Department systems.  
 
Description:
The Parent-Child Relationship Competencies (PCRCs) are a set of bi-directional (parent-to-child and child-to-parent) capacities developed during the first three years of life.  In situations of undue stress, particular PCRCs may be underdeveloped or absent.  Focusing on the PCRCs offers a strengths-based, culturally-attuned framework for collaborative assessment and treatment planning with families.
 
This workshop introduces the 21 PCRCs and provides examples of 1) how each competency might be negatively impacted by a diagnosable mental health difficulty on the part of a parent (DSM IV) or child (DC0-3R), and 2) how goals and objectives might be collaboratively developed to address the resulting impairments in functioning.  Vignettes drawn from a multicultural population of families illustrate the advantages of PCRC-focused clinical work.  Practitioners will work in small groups to apply the PCRC approach to vignettes provided by the presenter as well as drawing on their own direct field experience.
 
Many practitioners struggle with the ways in which systems of care can pathologize individuals, fragment dyads and families, exclude vulnerable populations, and impede genuine parent-practitioner partnership. The overarching intention of this workshop is to bring practitioners together to share insights and strategies for overcoming such obstacles in order to stay strong in our commitment to inclusive, relationship-based, multicultural infant/family work.