Professional Development Topics

Assessing & Promoting Resilience in Preschoolers: The Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) Preschool Program

Devereux offers nationally standardized screening and assessment tools that link results to strategies aimed at promoting young children’s resilience. Professional development options are available that explore best practices and implementation of the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment Preschool Program, for children 3 years through 5 years old.

In these sessions, participants will learn:

Skills for effective observation, assessment, and strategic planning for both the care and home settings
Strategies that promote high quality environments for all children as well as strategies that support individual children with social and emotional needs
Creative solutions that encourage family involvement in efforts to strengthen children’s healthy social and emotional development

Professional development options on the DECA Program include:

1-Day DECA Preschool Program Overview Training
2-Day DECA Preschool Program Implementation Training (Best Practice)
1-Day DECA Preschool Program Refresher Training
1-Day DECA Preschool Program for Family Service Workers
1-Day DECA Preschool Program Strategies Training (for those programs who have received training and are looking to strengthen skills in using assessment results for planning)
Birth – 5 sessions also available

The Devereux Early Childhood Assessment Preschool Program Local Program Mentor Training

The 2-Day DECA Preschool Program Local Program Mentor Training helps prepare participants to return to their local programs and offer technical assistance and workshops on the DECA Program. This training is highly interactive, with the expectation that participants will present a training workshop or mentoring plan to the group. This training is limited to 25 participants in order to maximize the opportunity for interactive discussion. In these sessions, participants will learn:

Essential key messages of the DECA Preschool Program and ways to communicate these messages with program staff
Skills for training and mentoring others around DECA Preschool Program implementation
Strategies for effective troubleshooting with program staff and participants around DECA Preschool Program implementation

2-Day Session available
* Birth – 5 Session also available

**In order to attend LPM training, participants need to have attended the DECA Program Basic Implementation Training conducted by a Certified Trainer.

Using the DECA-C (Clinical) As A Tool To Measure Strengths And Behavioral Concerns In Preschool Children

The DECA-C is a standardized, norm-referenced behavior rating scale that measures both behaviors related to resilience and behavioral concerns in young children ages two through five. The DECA-C can be used as a companion to the DECA Program and as a stand alone tool. This professional development session is designed for mental health professionals, social workers, and other child-serving professionals who work with children already identified as having challenging behaviors. In this session, participants will learn:

How to use the DECA-C to understand the needs of children who display challenging behavior over time
How to administer and interpret the DECA-C assessment results
How to effectively incorporate the assessment results into a behavior plan

Half-day and Full- day sessions available

** Participants need to be a “Level B” user to order and use this tool. For more information on the qualifications of a Level B user, click here.

Facing The Challenge: Helping Teachers Work With Children Who Use Challenging Behaviors

In this 2.5-day intensive, interactive train-the-trainer session, participants delve more deeply into the understanding of, prevention of, and planned responses to challenging behaviors in young children. In this session, participants will learn:

How to prepare and deliver trainings of varying lengths on challenging behaviors
To customize training modules to create their own workshops that meet the particular needs of their audiences
To illustrate the behavioral planning process using real classroom footage from Facing the Challenge and Classroom Moments, two DVDs developed by the Devereux Early Childhood Initiative in partnership with the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)
Strategies from the best-selling book by Barbara Kaiser and Judy Sklar-Rasminsky, Challenging Behavior in Young Children

2.5 day Train-the Trainer session available. Keynotes addressing challenging behaviors and a 1-Day Facing the Challenge Training for staff is also available.

FLIP IT: Don’t Flip Out, Use FLIP IT!

This two-day train-the-trainer session is an interactive session that teaches participants to use a four-step strategy that helps young children identify their feelings, learn healthy self-control, and reduce challenging behavior. In this session, participants will learn:

The importance of the four steps of FLIP IT(Feelings, Limits, Inquiries, and Prompts) as they relate to the healthy social and emotional development of young children
Skills to use this concrete strategy immediately in the classroom
Ways to deliver a standardized one-day FLIP IT training, or a series of five workshops

2 day Train-the-Trainer session available. Keynote sessions and a 1-Day FLIP IT Training for staff is also available.

On-line learning modules on FLIP IT is also now available! Click here for more information.

Building Your Bounce: Strategies To Support Adult Resilience

The quality of service that adults provide to children and families is directly impacted by the manner in which they care for themselves. This training is designed to explore the importance of taking care of and promoting the social and emotional health of the caregiver. Participants will learn:

How the social and emotional well-being of the adult has an impact on their ability to care for children
Specific, simple, inexpensive strategies to reduce stress and promote the adult’s social and emotional health

Half-day, Full-day, and Keynote sessions available.

Additional Professional Development Topics

Screening, assessment, and evaluation
Observation of young children
Promoting quality in the early learning environment
Parent involvement in promoting social and emotional health of young children
Supporting young children with challenging behaviors
Advocacy techniques to promote social and emotional health
Linking social and emotional health to school readiness and/or early literacy
Using the DECA Program for home visitors
Using the DECA Program for children in the child welfare system
How the DECA Program can meet Early Head Start/Head Start Performance Standards
The learning pyramid model and the DECA Program working together
Using Committee for Children’s Second Step and the DECA Program to meet classroom needs
Customized workshops and trainings to meet your program’s needs

For more information or to schedule a session at your site, please complete our Professional Development Needs Assessment Form.