Featured speakers

We’re excited to welcome you to Minnesota for the 2nd Annual Reflective Supervision/Consultation Summer Symposium.

Jane Ellison

Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health – Infant Early Childhood (MACMH-IEC)

Jane Ellison headshotJane R. Ellison, LMFT, IMH-E® (IV) is a community leader in early childhood mental health. She has more than thirty years experience working with young children and their families, including clinical work in private practice, parent education in Early Childhood Family Education, home visiting, family literacy, child abuse and neglect prevention programs and a domestic violence shelter. Ms. Ellison holds licensure in parent education, early childhood education, and Marriage and Family Therapy, a certificate in infant and early childhood mental health from the University of Minnesota and holds Clinical Level IV Infant Mental Health Endorsement through MAIECMH. She is presently holding several positions, including clinical work with children birth through age five and their families in her private practice ‘Nurturing Possibilities,’ where she also provides reflective consultation and training. Ms. Ellison is the official Minnesota trainer for Trauma Informed Child Parent Psychotherapy. She has spent eight years as Project Manager for Greater St. Cloud Area Thrive and has been Early Childhood Mental Health Specialist for the Sauk Rapids/Rice ECFE program. Ms. Ellison is a CEED Affiliate Faculty in the University of Minnesota Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Certificate Program and provides consultation on assessment and diagnosis using the DC 0-5 through the Minnesota Department of Human Services Great Start Program. Jane co-authored and instructs the online course for Child Welfare professionals, Working with Parents: Using Infant Mental Health Principles to Support Special Populations.

Michele Fallon

Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health – Infant & Early Childhood (MACMH-IEC)

Michele Fallon headshotMichele Fallon, LICSW, IMH-E® (IV), Co-chair, Minnesota Association for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health. Ms. Fallon is a licensed clinical social worker endorsed at Level IV in infant and early childhood mental health through the MN Association of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (MAIECMH), of which she is currently co-chair. With 40 years of experience with young children and families across a variety of settings, Michele currently provides infant and early childhood mental health reflective consultation, supervision and training for home visitors, early care and education providers, foster parents, early childhood special education, and others working with young children and their families. Michele co-authored and instructs the online course for Child Welfare professionals, Working with Parents: Using Infant Mental Health Principles to Support Special Populations.

Anne Gearity

University of Minnesota

Anne Gearity headshotAnne Gearity, Ph.D., LICSW, has a mental health practice in Minneapolis and consults extensively in the community with schools and agencies that serve children. She has been a University of Minnesota community faculty for many years in the school of social work and department of psychiatry, as well as faculty in the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Certificate Program. Her special focus has been very young children who become aggressive and disruptive in the community and she is author of Developmental Repair, a treatment approach originating at Washburn Center for Children and now used throughout the state and county. In 2015, The Casey Family Foundation deemed this a “very promising practice.” She has provided reflective practice to numerous groups and uses it continually in her own work.

Carol Grise

Idaho Association for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health

Carol Grise headshotCarol Grise, MA, LMFT, LPC, IMH-E® (IV) is licensed as a Marriage Family Therapist and is endorsed as an Infant Mental Health Mentor (Clinical) through the Idaho Association for Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health, also known as Aim Early Idaho, of which she is currently the President and Endorsement Coordinator. Carol’s passions extend beyond Idaho’s borders to Iowa and Washington. She provides endorsement consultation and support to Iowa and is involved in a 4-state collaborative (which includes Oregon, Alaska, Washington, & Idaho) through a MIECHV Innovation Grant to strengthen the home-visiting workforce. While she has worked in a variety of settings in her career the last 17 years have been exclusively with infants, toddlers, their families and those who support them. Carol also provides reflective supervision/consultation and training to other professionals working with our youngest children and families. Mindfulness, gratitude, and self-compassion are Carol’s guiding principles professionally and personally. She reminds herself daily that joy exists in the journey not the destination.

Jill Hennes

University of Minnesota

Jill Hennes photoJill Hennes, MSW, LICSW, IMH-E® (IV), has worked in home visiting and infant mental health for thirty years, as home visitor, supervisor, consultant, and therapist. A licensed clinical social worker, she is endorsed in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (Clinical) and holds a certificate in Child Abuse Prevention Studies from the University of Minnesota. Jill learned about building a statewide system of support for reflective practice Reflective Practice while at the Minnesota Department of Health. In collaboration with a national committee and the Center for Early Education and Development at the University of Minnesota, she has been involved in the development of an observation scale to describe and operationalize reflective consultation and supervision, the Reflective Interaction Observation Scale (RIOS). Jill is currently an independent consultant and trainer, and continues to be intrigued by the work of supporting the reflective practice and professional development of those who provide relationship-based services to families and their young children.

Carol Siegel

University of Minnesota

Carol Siegel headshotCarol Siegel, Ph.D., LP, is a clinical psychologist in Minneapolis who sees parents and young children in her private practice. Her primary clinical focus is parenting and issues encountered by parents with complex histories. Carol began studying infant/parent relationships and developmental movement as a trainee at Child Development Research in New York. She received her doctorate from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California and trained at the Infant Parent Program at the University of California, San Francisco, the San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center, and McLean Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, in Belmont, MA.

In addition to private practice, Carol teaches in the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Certificate Program at the University of Minnesota. She also provides training, collaboration, and consultation to professionals and home-visiting programs on topics such as high-risk families, child-parent psychotherapy, attachment and infant mental health, parenting and parental mental health issues, and reflective practice.

Christopher Watson

University of Minnesota

Christopher Watson headshotChristopher Watson, Ph.D., is a Research Associate in the Center for Early Education and Development (CEED) in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. His work is centered on professional development with a focus on the social and emotional development of young children and reflective supervision/consultation to support practitioners working with young children and their families. He led a national team of researchers and clinicians in developing the Reflective Interaction Observation Scale (RIOS) to define and operationalize reflective supervision/consultation. One of his recent large scale projects was an evaluation of the Minnesota Department of Health’s system-wide reflective practice capacity building initiative with funding from the federal Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program. Dr. Watson is director of the Minnesota Department of Education’s Early Intervention Summer Institute and the Principal Investigator of a project assisting the Minnesota Department of Education build and maintain their innovative regional professional development system. He was director of the Minnesota Infant Mental Health Project and conducted the Minnesota Infant Mental Health Feasibility Study, interagency initiatives funded by the State Departments of Education, Health and Human Services.

Dr. Watson holds Level 4 Endorsement in Infant Mental Health (IMH-E®[IV]) from the Minnesota Association for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health and is a certified Program for Infant Toddler Care (PITC) trainer. He has co-written training-of-trainer curricula, including PITC as a Curriculum, Talking Reasonably and Responsibly About Brain Development and Violence Prevention and Intervention in Early Childhood. In addition, he has developed face-to-face online training courses for early childhood professionals, including Supporting Stressed Young Children Through Relationship-Based Teaching and Bridging Education and Mental Health (BEAM). The BEAM framework combines behavioral and therapeutic approaches to addressing early childhood social-emotional development, mental health and challenging behaviors.

Dr. Watson and Martha Farrell Erickson, Ph.D. co-founded the interdisciplinary, post-baccalaureate Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Certificate Program at the University of Minnesota. Prior to his work at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Watson was director of the California Education Innovation Institute, a statewide training program for educators and administrators based at California State University Sacramento.

Deborah Weatherston

Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health, Inc.®

Deborah Weatherston headshotDr. Deborah Weatherston, Ph.D., IMH-E® (IV), is the Executive Director of the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health, Inc.®. In this role, she leads the nationally recognized, professional development plan, the MI-AIMH Endorsement for Culturally-Sensitive, Relationship-Focused Practice Promoting Infant Mental Health, adopted by 28 infant mental health associations in the USA and Australia. She has written extensively about infant mental health principles and practices and, most recently, about reflective supervision as a cornerstone for effective work with infants, very young children and families. Of additional interest, she is a Board Member of the World Association for Infant Mental Health where she is the Editor of Perspectives in Infant Mental Health.