COLUMBUS – Governor John Kasich's Office of Health Transformation today announced additional funding to coordinate care and improve health outcomes for high-risk mothers and children in southeast Ohio. The Kasich administration will invest $350,000 to replicate the Community Pathways Model in the Appalachian region of southeast Ohio through a partnership between Integrating Professionals for Appalachian Children (IPAC) and Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Partners for Kids (PFK). The Community P...

Please join child advocate and author, Holly Schlaack in a videoconferenc presentation/ discussion:  Between the Babbles: Understanding the Language of Abused and Neglected Infants and Toddlers. Sponsored by the Southeastern Ohio Early Childhood Mental Health Learning Group, the program will take place on January from 17 8:30-9:30.  There will be CEU’s for Counselors and Social Workers Please e-mail Sherry Shamblin at sshamblin@tcmhcs.org to participate.   For over a dec...

With funding from Project LAUNCH, teachers in the Logan Hocking School District and their mental health partners have expanded their highly successful PATHS program. Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies or PATHS is a social-emotional violence prevention curriculum listed on the SAMSHA National Registry of Evidence Based Programs and Practices. In previous years, the LHSD program primarily focused on elementary students.

Check out some of the latest early childhood mental health news and program updates, as well as practical teaching tips for helping children develop self-control and friendships.  If you'd like to contribute your own ECMH news and strategies to future newsletters, you can e-mail them to sshamblin@tcmhcs.org.   http://www.ipacohio.org/Websites/ipac/images/vol%201%20ed%201%20ecmh%20newsletter.pdf

Ellen Soroka, left, and Sue Meeks read over material in the new Child Behavior and Development Resource Room located in Parks Hall.

Children don’t come with a user manual. And sometimes determining if a child is developing or behaving normally can be a tough call. Even with a diagnosis, life can be difficult to manage. With the addition of a new resource center, members of the Family Navigator Program hope to give parents and caregivers a free option to turn to for questions and concerns related to a child’s development and behavior.

The new Child Behavior and Development Resource Room, part of the Family Navigator Program, provides information, support and resources on Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, behavior concerns and general child development. It’s designed to be a place where parents and caregivers can bond, vent, share and learn.

Sherry Shamblin, Director of Early Childhood Programs for Tri-County Mental Health and Counseling Services, also former IPAC Chair and current board member, has been selected for Robert Wood Johnson’s Evaluation Fellows Program for Retooling Professionals.   The goal of the fellowship, which targets mid-career, non-profit professionals who are undeserved in the evaluation field, is to increase the capacity of an organization to conduct program evaluation and to become better consumers of in...

Dr. Zeanah

On September 20th, the Southeastern Ohio Early Childhood Mental Health Peer Learning Group kicked off their program year by hosting a practical and informative video-conference with Dr. Charles Zeanah, the editor of the Infant Mental Health Handbook and Executive Director of Tulane University’s Institute of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health.

Dr. Zeanah opened his remarks by commenting that young children are “best understood, assessed, and treated in the context of their primary care relationships.” Focusing on assessment protocols, he used multiple video-clips to display an array of behavioral and emotional responses between young children and their caregivers. His casual demeanor and extensive knowledge made the complex issues associated with child-parent relationships readily accessible.

In August, 10 of our local social workers and two local psychologists received training in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, an evidence-based treatment for young children with emotional and behavioral disorders that places emphasis on improving the quality of the parent-child relationship and changing parent-child interaction patterns. Two specialists from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Robin Gurwitch, PhD, and Erica Pearl, PsyD, conducted this intense week-long training tha...

A one-day workshop, The Impact of Trauma and Neglect on the Developing Child, will be presented by Bruce Perry, M.D., Ph.D., Senior Fellow, ChildTrauma Academy (http://www.childtrauma.org/index.php/home), on April 12, 2011, 8:15 – 4:30 in the Baker University Center Ballroom on the Ohio University Athens Campus.    Cost: $125 (includes continuing education credit)   Overview: The development of a young child is profoundly influenced by experience. Experiences – good and bad -...

On Tuesday March 9, 2010, the Athens County chapter of the American Red Cross held its second annual "Hometown Heroes Breakfast" at Ohio University Nelson Commons.  The purpose of the event is to honor "extraordinary citizens" county-wide in seven categories: Education, Humanitarian, Youth, Public Safety, Community, Military, and Group heroes.  IPAC was named the 2010 Group Hero for its efforts toward improving the health -- physical and mental -- of young children and t...

Dawn Graham, Ph.D., was hired in July, 2010, as the Local Young Child Wellness Coordinator for Project LAUNCH. 

Dawn received her Doctor of Philosophy in Counseling Psychology from Purdue University after earning a Master of Arts in Applied Behavioral Science: Counseling from Valparaiso University (Indiana) and a Bachelor of Science in Clinical Psychology with Honors from the University of Evansville (Indiana).  

She brings a wide range of experience including testing, counseling...

Celebrating our Success 
& 
Getting to Work

November 16, 2009 
8:30- 10:30 am
Ohio University Inn 
Galbreath Room, Lower Level
RSVP required by November 11, 2009 to hamel-lj@ohio.edu

Our Rural Health Outreach grant proposal was funded! The Office of Rural Health Policy awarded us $375, 000 to integrate early childhood mental health consultation into public preschool classrooms and to implement a workforce development initiative. The three year project period is May 1, 2009 – April 30, 2010.

Sustainable Partnerships

Presented at The 9th All-Ohio Institute on Community Psychiatry Conference: Working Together: New Paradigms for Integrated Mental Health Services by

Jane Hamel-Lambert, MBA, PhD
Karen Montgomery-Reagan, DO,
Sherry Shamblin, PCC-S
Dawn Murray, DO

Jane Hamel-Lambert, PhD, President of IPAC and John Borchard, RN, BSN, Chair, IPAC Board of Directors accepted a donation in the amount of $4426.68 from the Organization for Health Improvement in Appalachian (OHIA) on August 21, 2008. Mr. Mike Turner, past president of OHIA presented the check, sharing recanting that the unanimous decision of his board to make the donation.

The work of IPAC board members Sue Meeks, RN, and Sherry Shamblin, PCC-S, is highlighted in the National Rural Health Association quarterly magazine Rural Roads.  The author, Dr. Lynn Harter of Ohio University's School of Communication Studies, describes how one couple, at a loss for how to treat their troubled daughter, found hope through the Family Navigator Program.  The article also explains the benefits of integrating mental health care assessments and services...

Abstract

Program:    
HRSA/ORHP/Rural Health Network Development Grant

Title:    
Integrating Professionals for Appalachian Children (IPAC)

The regional children’s rural health network Integrating Professionals for Appalachian Children (IPAC) recently gained non-profit charity status. This qualifies the network and its member organizations to apply for additional funding streams, and it makes individual donations to IPAC tax-deductible.  Those benefits will help sustain and expand the efforts of IPAC over time, according to Jane Hamel-Lambert, Ph.D., IPAC president and director of interdisciplinary mental he...

Jane Hamel-Lambert, PhD, President of IPAC and John Borchard, RN, BSN, Chair, IPAC Board of Directors accepted the 2007 Award for Distinguished Rural Health Program from Heather Reed from ODH Office of Primary Care and Rural Health and Susan Isaac, Ohio Rural Health Coalition on September 18, 2007.

The Ohio Department of Health will honor IPAC, and other health care champions and providers, for its efforts to increase access to care in rural Ohio. The awards will be given Sept. 18, at the Rural Health Information Technology Conference at Ohio University in Athens.