South Carolina Infant and Young Child Mental Health Association, Inc.

The South Carolina Infant and Young Child Mental Health Association, Inc. or SCIMHA (“skim-uh”) was incorporated in June 2017. It is a multidisciplinary, professional, non-profit organization established to promote and support the optimal social-emotional development of infants, very young children and their families through relationship-focused supports and services. SCIMHA promotes uniform and nationally recognized competencies and standards to ensure that individuals supporting young children are trained in up-to-date science of child development, infant mental health principles and relationship-based practices. SCIMHA is responsible for supporting professionals seeking Endorsement for Culturally Sensitive, Relationship-Focused Practice Promoting Infant Mental Health®.

SCIMHA grew out of a state-wide multidisciplinary leadership committee that began convening in 2016 to promote the capacity of child and family serving workforce sectors in the domain of social emotional development through the adoption and implementation of the Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health Competency Guidelines® and Endorsement for Culturally Sensitive, Relationship-Focused Practice Promoting Infant Mental Health®.

Over the next few years, SCIMHA will be largely focused on providing professional development experiences that build a deeper understanding of Infant-Early Childhood Mental Health (I-ECMH) concepts to help professionals across child and family-serving workforce sectors see how I-ECMH is relevant to their work.

Kerrie L. Schnake, Director, SC Program for Infant/Toddler Care stated that what excites her most about the work is the potential to truly change the trajectory of a young child’s life. There’s no greater period of influence on a person’s future than during those very early years. The other exciting piece of this work that is encouraging is the interdisciplinary nature of it. There are so many different workforce sectors and professionals who are impacting the social-emotional well-being of very young children. Whether it’s a pediatrician with just a few minutes to engage with the family during a well-visit, a home-visitor with an ongoing, supportive relationship with the family, or a social worker from the child welfare system engaging with a family under stressful conditions; they all have the potential to support, ignore or hinder a child’s social-emotional well-being. The better we understand I-ECMH, the better we all can ensure that we’re making the most of our time with young children and families.

Kerrie serves on the Maternal, Infant & Child Health Subcommittee. It’s great to see so many influential institutions and agencies working together to improve outcomes for children. With all of these change agents coordinating and aligning efforts, the tri-county will have much healthier generations to come.