Brain Story Certification
Brain Certification developed by the Alberta Family Wellness Initiative (AFWI)
The Brain Story Certification course is professional development opportunity that equips us with the knowledge to bridge the gap between key concepts in brain science and practical applications that form the foundation for children's learning, behavior, and health. The course provides an essential understanding of how genes, environment, and early experiences shape brain architecture, highlighting the importance of positive interactions with caregivers for healthy brain development.
Brain Story emphasizes supporting children and families throughout all stages of development, including prenatal development. It explains how early childhood trauma and toxic stress affect neural connections and lifelong health, leading to issues such as emotional dysregulation, depression, anxiety, impaired executive function, chronic illness, and addiction. The course underscores that healthy social and emotional development, and the development of resilience and coping skills, depend on attentive parenting and a supportive family structure. Strengthening families by improving parents’ capacity as caregivers, serves as a protective factor, and can be achieved with social support, prenatal health, nutrition, and healthcare, all of which are vital to preventing the transmission of toxic stress from intergenerational adverse childhood experiences and addiction.
A key concept in the course is “serve and return,” which describes the responsive, back-and-forth interactions between a caregiver and a child, such as smiling and making funny facial expressions in response to babbling. Developing an understanding of the brain science and impact on "serve and return” interactions on development, supports collaborative efforts with other healthcare professionals, while increasing our professional competence around educating and supporting caregivers to create nurturing environments. Furthermore, upon understanding how to integrate this key concept into practice, we will be able to advocate for programs and policies that promote responsive and positive daily interactions between caregivers and their children.
After completing Brain Story, I felt it was an extremely well-thought-out compilation of evidence-based resources that will support my future work with families and children. I highly recommend this training and the link to the free course is as follows: https://www.albertafamilywellness.org/training/
Written by social work practicum student, Heather Pederson, MSc.