Presidential Welcome
2007
Carol Falender, Ph.D.
Independent Practice,
Clinical Professor, UCLA
The Division
begins its 29th year and I am honored to be the President, having
previously served the Division as Secretary.
My Presidential themes are collaboration,
advancing thinking, advocacy, and practice of evidence-based treatments for
minority children, youth, and families, and continuing expanding advocacy for
and training in child, youth and family issues
With our name change to Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice, we are expanding efforts to work with a wide range of other professionals in the areas of prevention, education and training, legislation, and clinical services to families, children, and youth. Far too few graduate programs train students to be advocates or focus their attention to underserved populations and their specific needs. A unifying factor this year is the desire to enhance training in child advocacy and in recognition of the individual and cultural differences of children, youth, and families, across levels of psychology training. It is generally known that as a profession, psychologists are the least active in advocacy, trailing way behind physicians, dentists, and most other professionals. So we need to ask WHY? Why do psychologists not advocate like other professionals? One of the roots appears to be that we simply are not trained in advocacy in our graduate work. Part of this is that psychology training has often been lacking in contextual considerations—and part of the context is the political and social environment in which we live. Also, although advocacy has been described as a core curriculum topic, it is not taught in most graduate psychology programs. A goal of many psychologists is to instill advocacy as a significant area of training and competence in graduate training and to provide for excellent opportunities for individuals to be trained and to practice advocating. As a member of Division 37 you can advocate for children, youth and families in a wide variety of ways—and learn how to do so effectively.
There are a number of ongoing and new task forces underway, many in collaboration with other APA divisions. The APA Task Force for Child and Adolescent Mental Health is an interdivisional task force based in Division 37, chaired by Karen Saywitz, a former president of the division and Barry Anton along with eight divisions (7, 12, 16, 27, 37, 43, 53, 54) and APA staff (Mary Campbell, Annie Toro, and Ron Palomares) Presently, they are organizing a Congressional Briefing on Children’s Mental Health, with support coming from across child and practice divisions. The Committee’s work on Children’s Mental Health has been outstanding. Talking points for advocacy which they developed are at: http://www.apa.org/ppo/issues/tftalkingpoints.html
An example of the talking points (from the website) is:
“Child and adolescent
mental health problems are at a point of crisis for our nation. One out of every ten
children or adolescents has a serious mental health problem, and another 10%
have mild to moderate problems. Mental health problems in young people can lead
to tragic consequences, including suicide, substance abuse, inability to live
independently, involvement with the correctional system, failure to complete
high school, lack of vocational success, and health problems.”
And if you haven’t seen it yet, check out another Task Force product: a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Consumer Website which you can access at http://ucoll.fdu.edu/apa Division 37 was the lead division on the CODAPAR (APA) grant to develop this website.
The task force on the Child Advocacy Training Initiative headed by Drs. Allison Redlich and Sandra Bishop-Josef has nearly completed its product: a CD which is a compilation of a vast number of resources to disseminate to grass roots organizations, individuals, and communities, “A Psychologist’s Guide to Advocacy: Legislative Support for Children, Youth, and Families.” This CD provides a framework for training for advocacy at the state level. The next step will be dissemination. Watch the website for updates and opportunities for involvement.
A task force on Ethnic Minority Issues is chaired by Ingrid Cordon. The task force members are interested in efficacy of current practices for intervention and treatment available to underserved and culturally diverse children and families. The groundwork was laid for this by 2004 President, Luis Vargas, and the Child and Family Policy and Practice Review on Cultural Diversity and Mental Health.
Our Cross-Cutting Symposium will be featured at APA this summer in San Francisco, with participants from five divisions Although evidence-based practice (EBP) is the standard of practice for treatment, child and adolescent therapists have grappled with issues of validity for diverse groups and diverse contextual variables and have found these significant barriers to dissemination. This cross-cutting symposium provides options of adapting existing evidence-based models to diverse groups or developing new interventions from the “ground up.” Models presented will be adaptations developed in close collaboration with the original developers of the model being modified as well as those developed “ground up.” Each psychologist in this symposium will present cutting-edge theory and research from his or her area of developmental, cognitive, social, clinical, school, and/or community psychology, then describe the application of that to minority children and adolescents.
The presenters, their topics and divisions are as follows:
Children’s Mental
Health
Innovations in
Evidence-based Treatment for Ethnic Minority Children and Adolescents
(Divisions 37, 12, 16, 48, and 53)
Chairs: Alec Miller, Psy.D. and Carol Falender, Ph.D.
Participant Papers:
1. Guillermo Bernal, Ph.D., María I. Jiménez-Chafey, Psy.D, Emily Sáez-Santiago, Ph.D. & Jeannette Rosselló, Ph.D.
Advances in the cultural adaptation of psychotherapy for
ethnic-minority youth
2. Bonnie K.
Nastasi, PhD
Developing Culturally-Specific Evidence-Based
Interventions: An Illustration from a Developing Country
3. Jill Emanuele, Alec Miller, & Paul Rohde
Challenges and
Discoveries of Applying the Adolescent Coping With Depression Course for Ethnic Minority Youth
4. Joachin Borrego, Jr.
Examining the Social
Validity of Interventions with Ethnic Minority Populations
5. Elke Rechberger, Ph.D.
Transforming
Treatment: Evidence-Based Interventions for Children of Families with
Co-Occurring Disorders
Discussants: Alan E. Kazdin, Ph.D. and Luis Vargas, Ph.D.
Also, we are working with divisions 45 and 12 and others on the development of a conference on Evidence Based Interventions for Diverse Populations. Once funding is obtained, more specifics will be available.
Past Section Presidents Bette Bottoms and Gail Goodman with Joel Dvoskin, President of Division 41, have formed an Interdivisional Task Force on the Prevention of Child Maltreatment. The organizers’ goal is for this task force to become the center of all child maltreatment prevention activities within APA.
Other Section on Child Maltreatment activities include: Cindy Miller-Perrin’s creation of a new curriculum guide on child maltreatment, Member-at-Large Jane Silovsky has led the effort to update the Section’s Internship Guide which is now available,
The Child and Family Policy and Practice Review: In 2007, watch for two exciting issues of the Child and Family Policy and Practice Review, edited by Anne Culp, Past-President. The first issue, edited by Karen Saywitz, will be on Children’s Mental Health.
Division
37 Executive Board and Committees: I was fortunate to follow Dr. Anne Culp as 2006
president. She brought to fruition
many of the activities and initiatives furthering the Division’s mission of
advocacy and research-based practice and policy. This year’s activities reflect Anne’s successful efforts at
getting many people busy and active in our division—and in finalizing our long
awaited name change!
Division 37 has a set of stellar officers this
year – all of whom would like to hear from you. The officers are: Patrick
Tolan, President-Elect; Jen Wyatt, Secretary,
Mark Chaffin, Treasurer; Members-at- Large are Ingrid Cordon, Allison Redlich,
and Joaquin Borrego; Gesenia Sloan-Pena, Student Representative. The Section for Child Maltreatment President
is Anthony Mannarino. Division 37’s
representative to APA’s Council is Jeff Haugaard.
Division 37’s current board members acknowledge
and thank those individuals who are stepping down. Betty Bottoms, Natalie
Porter, Cynthia Schellenbach, and Kelly Kinnison have strengthened the Division
with their hard work and commitment.
New appointments to Division 37
committees: Diane Willis is the
newly-appointed Fellows Chair; Rebecca Feinberg is co-chair with Tina Anctil of
Membership committee.
.
My other goals for my presidential year are:
We have two editors who continue their hard
work: Lori Camparo is the newsletter
editor of The Child, Youth, and Family
Advocate and Patricia Hashima is the editor of the Child and Family Policy and Practice Review.
We are in the process of identifying a new
editor for the Review, so contact me if you have interest.
In conclusion, the Division of Child, Youth, and Family
Services is an exciting division!
Division 37 members continue to work hard on research-based
advocacy. Spread the word and recruit
new members. We would love to
see you at Convention which promises to be incredible in San Francisco this
summer (August 17-20). The more members
who attend our programs, the more hours we will be given for next year’s
convention! So please come and participate.
Please visit Division 37 website: http://www.apa.org/about/division/div37.html
. You can join the Division 37 Listserve. This listserve is screened very
carefully and it is not overused. To
subscribe, send an email to div37-request@lists.apa.org. In the message
field (not subject line) type: subscribe div37.
Please feel free to contact me with ideas,
questions, or comments.
Carol Falender, Ph.D.
Independent Practice and Clinical Professor, University of
California, Los Angeles