The Supporting Child Caregivers Podcast

Prajna Neelgund, software engineer, teacher, administrator, and actor talks to us about family values in traditional and contemporary India—how they are changing and the effects on young families.

Rohan Abhijith, a man of many talents-- educator, gamer, business strategist, and cartoonist and illustrator—talks about the family values he learned in his childhood in India. I met Rohan at Deenabandhu Trust, a school for children from low-resource families and was lucky enough to meet this mother and father in the beautiful city of Mysore.

SCC Pod host Alexandra Harriso draws on her decades of clinical experience and her experience as a parent to share her reflections on the importance of family values and how they can help guide parents through hard times.

Dr. Henry Marquez-Castro talks about how parents can strive to empower their children.

Ask Me Anything: 1) How do you detect depression in elementary school children? 2) How much of a problem is "screen time" for children? 3) How do I overcome the desire to be a "perfect parent" and to develop a support system? 

Dr. Duyen Trieu brings her compassion, interpersonal and language skills, and cultural knowledge, to serve the community of Vietnamese immigrants in the Boston area. She speaks about early relational health from this perspective.

Dr. Jaclyn Ruggiero speaks about what she has learned about early relational health from her work as a neonatologist in the NICU.

A teacher and advocate for excellent early care and education of young children and their families, Lisa Matter tells stories about some of the families she has worked and how she learned to “listen to the behavior” of the children.

Efuru McLeod, a licensed social worker born and raised in the small island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, gives a moving and inspiring story of her childhood experience with multiple caregivers. She explains how her personal experience of different and complementary care from family members informs and enriches her current work with children and families.

Hoda Shawky, a pediatric nurse practitioner and lactation and mental health practitioner, describes the evolution of her spiritually and culturally based support of mothers of infants and their families.

Early educator, Katie Mervin, talks to us about her passion for providing a comforting and facilitating environment for very early learners and for supporting their teachers.

Kailey Enayati, a Doctor of Physical Therapy, treats patients on the continuum from birth to end of life talks about what she has learned about early relational health from her patients' life stories and is in the process of designing an app to facilitate ERH-centered documentation that would make it easier for home visitors and families to write or access providers and improve referrals to other...

Dorothy Richardson talks about her pioneering work to support families of young children at the Rice Center and in establishing the Early Relational Health certificate program at U Mass Chan Medical School.

Dr. Bonnie Hepler talks about her studies of relationships between mothers, infants, and healthcare providers and how she works with vulnerable populations to achieve equity of quality and compassionate care.

Charles C. Daniels, the CEO of Fathers’ UpLift Inc., talks about the significance of father-child relationships and how this led him to the field of Early Relational Health. He tells stories of fathers who found their role as fathers after being lost to substance abuse and in doing that, found themselves.  

Dr. Dvir speaks about a collaborative care model in which child psychiatrists and pediatricians work together to support early relational health. Dr. Yael Dvir is a child and adolescent psychiatrist at UMASS Chan Medical School/UmassMemorial Health, where she is Vice Chair and director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Her current clinical work focuses on enhancing access to pediatric behavi...

Dr. Meeder, a pediatrician and Medical Director of a Family Child and Youth Mental Health Program, talks about how he came to understand the importance of early relational health as a pediatrician and how he works to support ERH in his pediatric practice. An accomplished athlete and world traveler, Rob also brings a spirit of adventure and an interest in culture to his work with families. 

Claudia Gold, a developmental pediatrician and author of four books on parenting, will introduce our new series, “What is Early Relational Health”?

In this Ask Me Anything episode, Alex responds to a question about what parents should do when a little boy insists on wearing dresses.

Jennifer Black combines expertise in early development with management consulting, exploring ways of helping systems grow—family systems and organizational systems. As a speech and language pathologist, a trainer in the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics, and a trainer in the NCAST model from the Parent-Infant-Child Institute, she brings her considerable skills to this talk, including a conside...

Matthew Valleau is a bilingual speech and language pathologist whose career trajectory took him from early intervention, where he worked with families in their homes, finally to working with children in the Boston Public Schools. Matthew brings a special set of talents and perspectives to helping children communicate. Reference: Valleau M, Arunachalam S (2017). The effects of linguistic context on...

Ann Densmore is a certified speech pathologist and audiologist with a doctorate in education from Clark University (specialty in child discourse) and a master’s in human development and psychology from Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Resources: Douglas S, Dunkel-Jackson, Sun T, Owusu P (2022). A review of research related to the POWR intervention: a Communication partner intervent...

Sara Douglas, Assoc Prof at Michigan State University in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies talks about her life-long mission to support communication in children with language disabilities.

Dr. Prelock talks about her studies of the nature and treatment of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) emphasizing the role of emotion regulation, social communication and perspective taking as important components of social cognition.

131 the SCC Pod: Jaclyn Roberto speaks about her work supporting children with communication problems and their families in weekly out patient sessions. Jaclyn is a speech-language pathologist who has been in the field for about 13 years.  Although she has worked in multiple settings over the course of her career, most of her career has been in a pediatric outpatient setting, where she works close...