Law and Ethics CE Credit Hours!
Ethical Assessment in Early Childhood Mental Health and Development
Presented by: Kristie Baber, MSW, LICSW, CCTP
When: Thursday, March 13th, 2025 | 9:00 am – 4:30 pm Pacific Time
Where: Live on Zoom. You will receive your Zoom link/invitation the week of the workshop.
Continuing Education Credit Hours: 6 Law and Ethics CEs | $199.00
This clinical workshop teaches assessment skills, tools, and diagnostics to providers engaging with young children. What does depression look like in an infant? Can you attribute a developmental delay to environment? How is recognizing an attachment pattern valuable to an overall assessment? When is it a typical developmental stage and when is it pathology? We’ll discuss these topics and more – as well as diagnostic and standardized tools to help in our work. We will particularly focus on at-risk populations and the impacts of abuse, neglect, and transgenerational issues. Teaching modalities will include a mix of clinical discussion, lecture, videos, case examples, and group exercises.
In response to new legislation in Washington state, HB 1325, this class will equip clinicians to utilize the DC:0-5 for diagnosing children and address the new requirement that “Requires clinicians to use the developmentally appropriate standard of practice for diagnosing children 0-5, the Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood (DC:0-5), rather than the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” ** (effective as of 7/25/21)
Workshop Objectives:
- Explore components of an ethical assessment process for young children in therapy (supported by WA HB 1325 requiring the Health Care Authority to provide reimbursement for up to five sessions of mental health intake and assessment of children from birth through age 5 in home and community settings).
- Discuss developmental domains and understand the interplay between early childhood mental health and overall development.
- Consider risk factors (including substance exposure) and examine traumatic impacts on early brain development.
- Review attachment and other developmental tasks in the first five years of life, as well as standardized tools for evaluation.
- Utilize the DC:0-5 (the DSM-5 for little kids) as the appropriate, ethical standard of practice and to meet the legal requirement for diagnosing for young children.
- Share community resources for concurrent early childhood intervention (focus will be on King County).