Greetings to all WAIMH Affiliates. This brief update addresses: new WAIMH Affiliates, news from our activities in Rome, including the board’s wish to address membership arrangements for Affiliate organisations and a reminder to keep the WAIMH office updated with any changes in your affiliate contact details.
New WAIMH Affiliates: Welcome
Over the last six months, the WAIMH Board has approved three new WAIMH Affiliate applications from South Carolina, California and Iowa. We welcome you all to the Affiliate Family and look forward to your ongoing involvement with us all.
News from Affiliate Activities at Rome World Congress May 2018
Pre congress Institute: This Affiliate event, organised in response to issues raised by members, was co-facilitated by Maree Foley and Anna Huber and involved a series of presentations by affiliate members who are experienced providers of Infant Mental Health training/programs from around the world. The training programmes described captured an array of contexts including online training, university-based training and community-based capacity building programmes. Participating presenters and panel members included: Clinical Associate Professor Julie Ribaudo (Michigan, US); Associate Professor Lynn Priddis (Australia); Emerita/Associate Professor Astrid Berg & Dr Anusha Lachman (South Africa); Dawn Cannon (UK); Ms Catherine Maguire (Ireland); Ms Catarina Furmark (Sweden-Nordic Association); Ms Nichole Paradis (Alliance for IMH); Dr Neil Boris ( Florida, US), and Dr Daphna Dollberg, Dr Sigal Knei-Paz and Dr Adena Hoffnuung (Israel). The half day event was very well attended and lots of valuable ideas were exchanged. Further details of presenters can be found on the WAIMH website: https://perspectives.waimh.org/2018/03/09/infant-mental-health-training-programmes-around-globe/
Affiliate Council leadership changes
Following the expiry of the four year terms of both Chair (Maree Foley) and Representative (Anna Huber), nominations were called for from Affiliate presidents or immediate past presidents for the two positions, and two nominations were received. A subsequent online voting process, administered by the WAIMH Office, ratified the election of Anna Huber (Australia) as Affiliate Council Chair and Jane Barlow (UK) as Affiliate Council Representative. A huge thank you goes to Maree Foley for all of her foundational work in supporting the establishment and development of the Affiliate Council since 2010, working initially with Martin St Andre till 2014 and from then with Anna. We (Anna and Jane) both look forward to building on Martin and Maree’s work to support and represent Affiliates on the WAIMH board.
Issues for members:
Supporting Refugee Families with infants
Affiliate members participated in a roundtable to discuss the challenges and to share experiences of supporting infants and families who are refugees. This was a very engaging session starting with short presentations about the local issues from Elif Gocek (Turkey) and Meropi Michaleli (Greece). WAIMH president Kai Von Klitzing and other board members were present and agreed that this issue required WAIMH attention. A working group including affiliate members, was set up to plan how WAIMH might best respond, including how best to support local IMH associations dealing with these issues.
Affiliate and WAIMH Membership
Among members of Affiliate organisations, there is some confusion about WAIMH membership requirements. Some are not aware that under current arrangements, WAIMH membership and membership of a local WAIMH Affiliated IMH association are separately arranged. In addition, some IMH organisations who wish to become/are WAIMH Affiliates have difficulty achieving and/or maintaining the minimum of ten WAIMH members, or do not realise that this is an ongoing requirement to remain a WAIMH Affiliate organisation. To deal with this situation, the president has proposed
changing the membership arrangements so that members of an Affiliate organisation become members of WAIMH at the same time. This would require a process of consultation with Affiliates and a vote to decide on the future membership arrangements.
All Affiliate organisations have been recently contacted by Anna and Jane to provide some preliminary information about their membership as a prelude to further discussion and consultation. We strongly urge Affiliate presidents to respond as soon as possible to the request for information so that you can fully participate in the consultation and decision making process as it proceed.
Guidelines for affiliates for WAIMH Congress bid and Congress organisation
In response to member feedback, the Affiliate Council has set up a working group to develop a set of guidelines for Affiliates wishing to bid for and (if successful bidders) subsequently co-organise a World Congress working with the Board, WAIMH Office and Congress Program Committee. The group, chaired by Anna Huber, will include Kaija Puura, WAIMH Executive Director, Giampaolo Nicolais (Italy), Libby Morton (Australia), Denise Guy (New Zealand) and Binu Singh (Belgium).
Keeping the WAIMH Office updated with any changes in affiliate contact details
The WAIMH office staff are working to update affiliate data into the WAIMH website. We understand that these details change over time as executive personnel change. We appreciate you updating the WAIMH office about these changes so we can always keep in touch with you with regards to affiliate council matters.
We wish you all the very best with your affiliate activities over the next months. We are always pleased to hear from you: your news, queries and challenges.
For any enquiries please contact:
The Affiliates Council Chair: Anna Huber (Australia) ahuber@familiesinmind.com.au
The Affiliates Council Representative: Jane Barlow (UK) jane.barlow@spi.ox.ac.uk
WAIMH: Affilates Corner, Perspectives Fall 2018
Authors
Anna Huber (Chair of the Affiliates Council) and Jane Barlow (Affiliate Council Representative)
