Photo by Michael Dames
More than 200 teachers, administrators, parents and health professionals attended the 4th Annual Early Childhood Conference at Fordham’s Lowenstein Center in May, to explore how relationship-based treatment approaches can best benefit young children with developmental and autistic disorders.
The day long conference, sponsored by the Graduate School of Education and Los Ninos Services, kicked off with a keynote address by Barbara Burns, Ph.D., chief clinical officer of the New York City Early Intervention Program, who discussed current research, made possible by new brain imaging technology, that shows a neurological link between positive family relationships and physical brain development in young children.
The conference also hosted presentations from Bank Street Family Center, the Department of Clinical Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the National Alliance for Autism Research, and the Resiliency Project at the Mailman School of Public Health, among others.
