Today, another group of service providers from agencies across Durham began Touchpoints Individual Level Training, making them the 6th cohort to be trained as part of the Durham Touchpoints Collaborative.
The Durham Touchpoints Collaborative is a certified Touchpoints community site, now with two complete training teams. This allows the Touchpoints Collaborative to provide even more training for additional service providers, furthering the reach of the Touchpoints approach through our community and enhancing how professionals engage with each other as well as with the families they serve.
This cohort of trainees included representatives from Duke Primary Children’s Care, Durham Early Head Start, Durham Head Start, Durham Public Schools, Healthy Families Durham, and East Durham Children’s Initiative. With multiple people from each agency, the Durham Touchpoints Collaborative hopes to saturate these partner organizations. There are now several organizations that have had 100% of their staff complete Touchpoints training!
Touchpoints is an evidence-based theory of child development based on the work of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton that is used by providers across disciplines (e.g. pediatrics, home visiting, early education). Once implemented by providers, this method helps parents understand regressions that accompany their children’s developmental spurts, which occur often during the first years of life. The Touchpoints approach gives providers tools to support parents during these challenging times and to strengthen the parent-child relationship. Touchpoints also helps to build relationships among providers to create a common language when working with families.
Since the launch of the Durham Touchpoints Collaborative in 2013, 95 providers from 16 organizations have completed training, reaching more than 2,000 families through their services. For more information, please contact Paulette Stephens, Director of Training and Community Engagement at Durham’s Partnership for Children.
