Thrive Center for Children, Families, and Communities

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The Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development (GUCCHD) was established over four decades ago to improve the quality of life for all children and youth, especially those with, or at risk for, special needs and their families. The work of the GUCCHD is grounded in a core set of values including:

* Engaging families, youth, and consumers in the development, implementation, and evaluation of Center activities;
* Ensuring cultural and linguistic competence in our work and the systems we support; and
* Promoting approaches that are family-centered and youth guided, culturally and linguistically competent, community-based, integrated, strength-based, and inclusive. These values are reflected in the Center’s key strategies including implementing partnerships, collaborative approaches, and participatory action and translational research.

10/14/2026

📢 Registration is still open for next week's webinar on infant and early childhood mental health consultation!

Caseworkers, foster and kin caregivers, home visitors, and supervisors already know what babies need. What they usually lack is someone to think the hard moments through with, week after week.

That’s what infant and early childhood mental health consultation provides. The payoff shows up twice: in how a young child is cared for today, and in whether the adult doing the caring is still in the job six months from now.

Hear how it works from Dr. Neal Horen (Georgetown Thrive Center), Monica McDonough (Arizona Department of Child Safety), and Molly Murphy Garwood and Golshan Motamedi (Children’s Wisconsin), plus early findings from leaders in more than a dozen states.

📅 Thursday, October 22, 2026
🕐 1–2 PM ET ǀ 12–1 PM CT ǀ 11 AM–12 PM MT ǀ 10–11 AM PT

Co-hosted by the Center of Excellence for IECMHC, Attunify by Thrive Center, and AIMHiTN.

⬇️ Registration link in the comments!

10/13/2026

🎉 Congratulations to Wendy Jones Whitty on her promotion to Assistant Professor on the SOM Research Track!

As Director of the Parenting Support Program, she leads a home visiting initiative that walks alongside parents, particularly parents with intellectual and developmental disabilities, as they build confidence in raising their children. As a Senior Policy Associate with the National Center for Cultural Competence, she carries that same commitment into policy and practice nationally. Thank you, Wendy, for everything you bring to the Thrive Center!

10/07/2026

Caseworkers. Foster and kin caregivers. Home visitors. Supervisors. You're the people who hold the baby, and you deserve support too.

You can't pour from an empty cup. Infant and early childhood mental health consultation gives the adults around babies and toddlers a space to slow down, reflect, and see each child more clearly, so more young children get the steady relationships they need.

Join us for Holding the People Who Hold the Baby: What Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Looks Like Inside Child Welfare, a free national webinar.

📅 Thursday, October 22, 2026
🕐 1–2 PM ET ǀ 12–1 PM CT ǀ 11 AM–12 PM MT ǀ 10–11 AM PT

Featuring Dr. Neal Horen (Georgetown Thrive Center), Monica McDonough (Arizona DCS), and Molly Murphy Garwood and Golshan Motamedi (Children's Wisconsin).

Co-hosted by the Center of Excellence for IECMHC, Attunify by Thrive Center, and AIMHiTN.

⬇️ Registration link in the comments!

10/05/2026

🎉 Congratulations to Jenn Drake-Croft, MSSW, IECMH-E®, on her recent promotion to Assistant Professor!

As Faculty Director of the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Certificate Program, she has strengthened the workforce that supports young children in the settings where they spend their days. Through her work with the Thrive Innovation Fellowship and Incubator, she also helps entrepreneurs scale ideas that reach more families. Congratulations, Jenn, on a well-earned recognition!

10/02/2026

Social and emotional development is one of the five domains under which a child can qualify for early intervention. It is also the one the system is least built to catch.

In our conversations with EI leaders over the last six months, the question of "How do we fund a consultant position for our program?" can sometimes seem unanswerable. So we want to change it to a question that does have answers: "How do we bring IECMHC skills into our program with the people we already have?"

Alabama, Illinois, and Wisconsin have each answered that differently.

On October 15 at 2:30 pm ET we are partnering with the Infant Toddler Coordinators Association to host an Early Intervention Roundtable where leaders from each state will share their strategies and stories, with ample time for Q&A.

⬇️ Register and read the 50-state survey results — links in the comments!

09/30/2026

🎓Meet Our Expert: Madeleine Mizelle

We're excited to shine a light on Madeleine Mizelle, a Program Coordinator whose work touches early childhood intervention and school-based mental health across the Thrive Center. Madeleine currently helps lead the development of a statewide learning network in Pennsylvania. This project connects mental health consultants working across a wide range of early childhood settings so they can learn from one another and strengthen their practice together. She has also contributed to the National Center on Health, Behavioral Health, and Safety, part of the Thrive Center’s work building the capacity of Head Start and other early childhood programs nationwide.

Madeleine holds a B.A.Ed. in Human Development and Family Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill, where she worked as a research assistant on interventions for elementary and middle school students and helped adapt the Sources of Strength model into a pilot wellness course for college students. She went on to co-author a published study about this work.

Madeleine also brings skills in survey design, focus group facilitation, and data collection, along with hands-on experience designing and launching programs from the ground up. In addition, Madeleine is a trained artist who looks for creative ways to bring that lens into her work. We’re so grateful to have her on the Thrive Center team!

09/28/2026

🎉 Congratulations to Amy Hunter, LICSW, on her recent promotion to Associate Professor on the SOM Research Track!

As co-lead of the post-graduate Clinical Certificate program in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health, she has helped prepare a generation of clinicians to support the youngest children and their families. Her training and technical assistance has also reached audiences in communities across the country. We're so grateful she's part of the Thrive Center!

09/24/2026

📢 One week left to register!

Most clinicians have a version of this: a workaround you built for one family, a resource you keep wishing existed, a fix you've described out loud a dozen times and never had anywhere to take.

Next Thursday, we're talking about where those ideas can go.

You don't need a pitch deck or a business plan to be part of it. There's a role here for an idea-bearer, an advisor to a venture, a reviewer, or someone with a problem worth solving and no clear place to bring it.

Open to clinicians across DC, Maryland, and Virginia!

📅 Thursday, October 1 | 4:00 PM ET | Virtual
⬇️ Registration link in the comments or use the QR code below!

09/22/2026

How much consultation does your system need and what impact can you expect from it?

This is the first question every early childhood serving leader will ask when looking to set up an IECMHC program.

Our first session in the new IECMH Leadership Series is dedicated to helping leaders come up with an informed answer.

Hosted by Dr. Neal Horen and featuring Brandy Fox, who leads Pennsylvania’s statewide consultation team, the session will help leaders understand the logic model, what impact they can expect from consultation, and how to plan capacity based on the number of children and adults they want to serve.

📅 Join us on September 29th at 1:30 pm Eastern.

Unlike many of our webinars, this one will have much more time for discussion and Q&A.

⬇️ Registration link in the comments!

09/21/2026

🎉 Congratulations to Dr. Dominique Charlot-Swilley on her recent promotion to Associate Professor on the SOM Research Track!

Her research has advanced how we support the wellbeing of the adults who care for young children, and her leadership of the Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health Family Leadership certificate program has opened professional pathways for parents across the DC area. We're grateful to have her spearheading this important work!

Address

2115 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Suite 601
Washington D.C., DC
20057

Telephone

+12026877962

Website

https://thrivecenter.georgetown.edu/

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