KAIMH annual conference
Join us spring of 2025! More details to follow.
For the best conference price, become a KAIMH member (the conference and membership is less than the conference fee for non-members). Member Registration ($275), Non-Member Registration ($325) Become a member here.
Registration closes April 9, 2024. Refunds and cancellations will be accepted until April 9. 2024 by 5PM. There will be a $25.00 processing fee for cancellations. No refunds will be provided after April 9, 2024, 5 PM. For cancellations please email [email protected]
Check out the conference agenda, lunch and breakout session information here.
KDHE Approved Hours: 9.5
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Thursday Conference Keynote:
Dr. Barbara Stroud, "Relationships, Regulation, and Resilience"
Dr. Stroud is a licensed psychologist with over three decades worth of culturally informed clinical practice in early childhood development and mental health. She is a founding organizer and the inaugural president (2017-2019) of the California Association for Infant Mental Health, a ZERO TO THREE Fellow, and holds prestigious endorsements as an Infant and Family Mental Health Specialist/Reflective Practice Facilitator Mentor. In 2018 Dr. Stroud was honored with the Bruce D. Perry Spirit of the Child Award. Embedded in all of her trainings and consultations are the activities of reflective practice, demonstrating cultural attunement, and holding a social justice lens in the work. Dr. Stroud’s book “How to Measure a Relationship” [published 2012] is improving infant mental health practices around the globe and is now available in Spanish. Her second book, an Amazon best seller, “Intentional Living: finding the inner peace to create successful relationships” walks the reader through a deeper understanding of how their brain influences relationships. Both volumes are currently available on Amazon. Additionally, Dr. Stroud is a contributing author to the text “Infant and early childhood mental health: Core concepts and clinical practice” edited by Kristie Brandt, Bruce Perry, Steve Seligman, & Ed Tronick.
Dr. Stroud received her Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from Nova Southeastern University, and she has worked largely with children in urban communities with severe emotional disturbance. Dr. Stroud’s professional career path has allowed her to work across service delivery silos supporting professionals in mental health, early intervention (part c), child welfare, early care and education, family court staff, primary care, and other arenas. She is highly regarded and has been a key player in the inception and implementation of cutting-edge service delivery to children Prenatal to five and their families; her innovative approaches have won national awards. More specifically, Dr. Stroud is a former preschool director, a non-public school administrator, director of infant mental health services and agency training coordinator. She has held an adjunct faculty position at California State Long Beach and maintained a faculty position in the Infant-Parent Mental Health Fellowship for 12 years. Currently, Dr. Stroud’s primary focus is professional training and private consultation from an anti-racist lens, with a focus on social justice, in the field of infant mental health. Dr. Stroud remains steadfast in her mission to ‘changing the world – one relationship at a time’.
Scholarships to cover registration and travel expenses are available at Kansas Child Care Training Opportunities.
Location: 12345 College Blvd., Overland Park, KS.
For a printable version of the campus and parking map for the Regnier Center, click here.
Hotel rooms are blocked at the Radisson Hotel, 12601 West 95th Street, Lenexa. Use code #G9662859
and also at the Double Tree by Hilton at 10100 College Blvd, Overland Park, KS, US
Friday Conference Keynote:
Dr. Melissa Hoffman, "Perinatal Peer Support: An Essential Component of Care"
Dr. Melissa Hoffman (a.k.a. Mel) has dedicated her career to promoting maternal and child health and wellness. She is a former labor and delivery nurse, doula, childbirth educator, breastfeeding educator, and community education specialist. She earned a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from the University of Kansas and is certified as a Perinatal Mental Health provider.
Dr. Hoffman works as a reproductive Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner integrated into an OB-GYN clinic at LMH Health in Lawrence, Kansas. She serves as a perinatal mental health content expert on grant-funded collaborative initiatives in Kansas, including Kansas Connecting Communities and Maternal Anti-Violence Innovation and Sharing.
In seventeen years of volunteer work, she has provided peer support to help-seekers across the state and serves as the state lead for Postpartum Support International coordinators in Kansas. Dr. Hoffman served as the first Chair of Postpartum Support International of Kansas. She serves on the PSI KS board as the Liaison to Postpartum Support International and Advocacy Lead. She is a national speaker on the topics of perinatal mental health, perinatal psychopharmacology, and perinatal peer support.
Dr. Hoffman founded Build Your Village, a perinatal mental health peer support network in Douglas County, Kansas, in 2007. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas with her husband and two boys.
For the best conference price, become a KAIMH member (the conference and membership is less than the conference fee for non-members).
Become a member here.
Registration closes April 9, 2024. Refunds and cancellations will be accepted until April 9. 2024 by 5PM. There will be a $25.00 processing fee for cancellations. No refunds will be provided after April 9, 2024, 5 PM. For cancellations please email [email protected]
Alice Eberhart-Wright Visionary Award
AEW Nomination
The Alice Eberhart-Wright Visionary Award recognizes outstanding achievements and significant contributions in the field of infant and early childhood mental health. The award is given to those who represent the mission of KAIMH and illustrate passion, creativity and best practices in their work supporting infant and early childhood mental health in Kansas. This award will be presented each year at the KAIMH annual conference. If you would like to nominate a candidate for the 2024 award, please complete the nomination form below by March 15, 2024.
Congratulations to the 2024 AEW Recipient:
Shana Schmidt
They say it takes a village. Our village is composed of our matriarch, Alice, for whom this award is named. A true visionary and storyteller that I am honored to be associated with.
Across the span of my 30-year career I have witnessed multiple changes and challenges to the strength of our village. The privatization of foster care, the creation of the Children’s Cabinet, and the understanding that early childhood emotional and relational development has a place in the mental health community. With each change came a challenge, yet slowly we saw a change.
Services such as training, consultation, coaching, and reflective supervision have taken me to every corner of our state and into many of your programs. From Hiawatha to Garden City, you each became a part of my village. You taught me about your community and the needs that are specific to that population. You laughed with me, and sometimes at me, when I made ridiculous assumptions about what I thought I knew your community needed.
The mentors in this room held me up when I took myself way too seriously, and the new energies entering this field of work rebuilt my hope for the future.
Look around you. This is your village.