Announcing the 2025 Annual Conference

“Looking Out for Mom: Supporting Families through Adversity”

Our 30th Annual conference will be held on September 25 & 26, 2025 at the newly renovated DoubleTree Inn by Hilton in Concord, NH (formerly the Holiday Inn). This conference attracts between 100-125 professional and paraprofessionals working in the fields of children’s mental health, early intervention, home visiting, Head Start, early care and education, preschool and other community supports.

Introducing Keynote Speaker

Dr. Catherine Monk

Catherine Monk, PhD, is the inaugural Diana Vagelos Professor of Women’s Mental Health in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Professor of Medical Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Research Scientist VI at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Monk’s research brings together perinatal psychiatry, developmental psychobiology, and neuroscience to focus on the earliest influences on children’s developmental trajectories — those that happen in utero and how to intervene early to help women and prevent risk for mental health disorders in the future children. Her research has been continuously funded by the NIH since she had her first support as a ‘K’ Career Development awardee in 2001; she also has received funding from the March of Dimes, Johnson & Johnson, the Robin Hood Foundation, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and the Bezos Family Foundation.

Dr. Monk is also the founding director of Women’s Mental Health @Ob/Gyn, an embedded initiative where she and other mental health professionals help women with stress, depression, anxiety across the lifespan. After completing her NIH post–doctoral fellowship in the Psychobiological Sciences at Columbia in 2000, Dr. Monk joined the faculty and established the Perinatal Pathways Laboratory(link is external and opens in a new window).

 

Call for Proposals

We are seeking workshop proposals (1.5 hours including time for discussion and questions) on related topics, including but not limited to:   

  • Perinatal/Postnatal mental health

  • Working with families with DCYF involvement

  • Realities of the refugee resettlement

  • The impact of divorce

  • Financial insecurities (housing, food, health)

  • Coping with changes to family structures (ambiguous loss)

  • Families impacted by substance use disorders

Interested? Submit a Workshop Proposal. Deadline April 1, 2025.