This week, 25 service providers from agencies across Durham completed Touchpoints Individual Level Training, becoming the first group to receive training from our newly-certified Durham Touchpoints training team.
After the first cohort – comprised of more than 20 participants from 10 different agencies – completed training last November, a leadership team was selected to attend Community Level Training at the Brazelton Touchpoints Center in Boston, MA, to become a certified Touchpoints community site. This allows the Durham Touchpoints Collaborative to provide its own training for additional service providers, furthering the reach of the Touchpoints approach through our community.
The certified Touchpoints trainers who led the training this week are: Paulette Stephens, Touchpoints Program Coordinator from Durham’s Partnership for Children; Cate Elander from East Durham Children’s Initiative; Renee Parks-Bryant from Durham County Department of Public Health, Randy Rogers from Durham County DSS, and Kate Thegen from Durham Early Head Start.
“We are so excited about becoming the Durham Touchpoints Site and completing our first training,” said Paulette Stephens. “This gives us an opportunity to see Durham agencies uniting around child development and enhancing how we as professionals engage parents.”
The second cohort to complete training includes representatives from Durham Early Head Start, East Durham Children’s Initiative, Genesis Home, Healthy Families Durham, and Welcome Baby. With multiple trainees from each agency, the Durham Touchpoints Collaborative hopes to saturate these partner organizations and create a ripple effect in our community.
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.
For more information about the Durham Touchpoints Collaborative, please contact Paulette Stephens.
