Equity and Cultural Sensitivity

Welcome to Module 3, which presents the third Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Competency, Equity and Cultural Sensitivity. This module will start with an introduction from Kadija Johnston and Eva Marie Shivers.

Kadija Johnston LCSW is a clinical social worker who has been a practitioner in the field of infant and early childhood mental health since 1985. She is the past Director of the Infant-Parent Program at the University of California, San Francisco (U.C.S.F.), where she pioneered the Program’s approach to Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation. The approach she developed serves as a model for other organizations, locally, nationally and internationally. She has disseminated the model through TA and training in 23 states and internationally. Currently, M. Johnston is on faculty at Georgetown University’s Center for Child and Human Development where she is contributing her expertise and experience in mental health consultation to the SAMHSA supported Center of Excellence in ECMH Consultation.

Ms. Johnston is active in local and national organizations involving infancy and early childhood mental health, including West Ed’s Program for Infant-Toddler Caregivers Group Care and Home Visiting Trainings and the Irving B. Harris Foundation Professional Development Network for Training and Diversity in Leadership in the Early Childhood Mental Health Field. She is a founding member of the Reflective Supervision Collaborative and RAINE, a group of national experts advancing practice, policy and research in ECMH Consultation.

Ms. Johnston writes and lectures nationally on infant and early childhood mental health. In addition to numerous articles, she co-authored the book MentalHealth Consultation in Child Care: Transforming Relationships With Directors, Staff, and Families.

In the next phase of her journey, Kadija is committed, and devoting energy to instilling equity, diversity and inclusion principles with greater intentionality and more explicitly in her personal and professional practices.

Eva Marie Shivers, J.D., Ph.D. is the executive director of Indigo Cultural Center, a non-profit action research firm located in Phoenix, AZ. Dr. Shivers' work at Indigo Cultural Center focuses on the developmental niche of infant and early childhood development, mental health and education to explore the evolution of frameworks for understanding families' culturally adaptive responses to poverty, systemic racism, and historical marginalization.

Prior to relocating to Arizona, Dr. Shivers was a faculty member in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA's Department of Education, Psychological Studies in Education. Dr. Shivers also holds a law degree from Howard University School of Law, and a BA in English Literature from Arizona State University.

Dr. Shivers has numerous peer-reviewed publications, and presents her research on equity, child care, mental health consultation, and other early childhood professional development initiatives throughout the country. She has served as Principal Investigator on many child care studies that involve collaborating with community agencies, national organizations, as well as state and county administrations. Racial equity is central to all research, evaluation and training efforts.

She currently provides early childhood racial equity training and consultation to infant and early childhood mental health community agencies and state departments around the country. For the past fifteen years, Dr. Shivers has provided child care research policy consultation to federal, state and local government agencies and administrators.

Introduction to Module 3 Transcript (PDF) (opens in a new tab)

Begin Module 3

Module 3 Equity and Cultural Sensitivity Transcript (PDF) (opens in a new tab)

Resources

• For information on the Diversity-Informed Tenets for Work with Infants, Children and Families: https://diversityinformedtenets.org (opens in a new tab)
• For additional resources on equity and social justice www.world-trust.org (opens in a new tab)
• To explore and better understand your own implicit biases, you can participate in an Implicit Association Test (IAT) through Project Implicit: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html (opens in a new tab)

References

• Barnett, Carolan, & Johns, 2013
• Davis, 2018
• Davis, Shivers & Perry 2019
• Department of Education 2016
• Diversity-Informed Tenets for Work with Infants, Children and Families•Duran et al., 2009
• Gilliam 2005,
• Gilliam and Shahar, 2006
• Gilliam, Maupin, Reyes, Accavitti & Shic, 2016; Yale Child Study Center
• Green, Everheart, Gordon and Gettman in 2006
• Kirwan Institute, 2015
• Johnston & Brinamen, 2006; 2012•Meek & Gilliam, 2016;
• McCann, Shivers, & Means, 2018
• Raible & Irizarry, 2010
• Roeser, 2009
• Sheridan, Rispoli, & Holmes, 2014
• Virmani, 2009
• Virmani & Ontai, 2010