Baby Steps: Poverty, Chronic Stress & New York's Youngest Children

Chronic stress and early trauma shape the brain development of very young children. Increasingly, research shows that innovative, early-life work with infants, toddlers and their parents can help prevent the need for much more costly interventions later on. Can we reduce the likelihood of abuse, neglect and mental illness in stressed-out, low-income families? What kinds of targeted interventions are working? And how should government and nonprofits respond? A conversation with experts in the field, and the release of the latest edition of Child Welfare Watch.

Keynote remarks by: Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., the Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital; and Director of the university-wide Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

A conversation with: Linda Lausell Bryant, executive director, Inwood House Susan Chinitz, professor of clinical pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine Piazadora Footman, parent; editorial assistant at Rise, a magazine written by and for parents in the child welfare system; and Chances for Children participant Benita Miller, deputy commissioner of family permanency services, NYC Administration for Children's Services

Moderated by: Andrew White, director, Center for New York City Affairs, The New School

The Child Welfare Watch project is made possible thanks to the generous support of the the Ira W. DeCamp Foundation, the Child Welfare Fund, the Viola W. Bernard Foundation, the Sirus Fund, the Pinkerton Foundation, the Prospect Hill Foundation and the Milano Foundation.