Families

Training and Best Practices header ECHO for Families is a community that provides opportunities for learning, advocacy, and mentorship with families that have a child with developmental disabilities, autism, or other special healthcare needs. This network allows families to receive professional support and brainstorm evidence-based solutions or share successes with other families around the state and nation.

The UW ECHO for Families is the first ECHO network that provides information directly to families and can be accessed anywhere in the state.

ECHO para familias en español

Sessions

Sessions are on Wednesdays, biweekly,
12:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. MT
via Zoom video conferencing technology.

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Instructions for joining Zoom are available. Zoom also provides access for users with physical disabilities, blindness, and low vision through a range of keyboard shortcuts.

Join an ECHO host site in person and connect with other families in your community. Parents, grandparents, and other family members are encouraged to attend. Lunch will be provided.

Host sites are available in Casper (for Spanish speaking families), Evanston, and Laramie.

Email Cari Glantz at cglantz@uwyo.edu for more information and to register.

Spring 2023 Learning Topics

January 11: Protective Factors Overview

This session will introduce the five Strengthening Families protective factors that are designed to help keep all families strong and on a pathway of healthy development and well-being.

Presenter: Jaclyn Klinginsmith, Program Manager, Wyoming Kids First and Traci Palmer, Program Assistant, Wyoming Kids First

January 25: Parental Resilience

This session will focus on the ability to recover from difficult life experiences, and often to be strengthened by and even transformed by those experiences.

Presenters: Sheena Hixson, Coordinator, Mercer Family Resource Center and Anna La Torre, Family and Parent Specialist, Mercer Family Resource Center

February 8: Social Connections

This session will focus on the ability and opportunity to develop positive relationships that lessen stress and isolation and help to build a supportive network.

Presenters: Tamara Currah, Teacher, Sublette County School District #1 and Emily Vercoe, Program Associate, Wyoming Afterschool Alliance

February 22: Concrete Support in Times of Need

This session will focus on access to supports and services that reduce stress and help to make families stronger.

Presenters: Emily Isaacson, Administrator, Lincoln County School District #2 and Michelle Heinen, Director, UPLIFT

March 8: Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development

This session will focus on the ability to exercise effective parenting strategies to guide and know what to expect as children develop in multiple domains (physical, cognitive, language and social and emotional).

Presenters: Brianna Romero, Director, The Early Learning Center and Susan Buettgenback, Program Coordinator, Parents as Teachers

March 22: Social and Emotional Competence of Children

This session will focus on family and child interactions that help children develop the ability to communicate clearly, recognize and regulate their emotions and establish and maintain relationships.

Presenters: Martha Nesslinger, Program Director, Wyoming Early Childhood Behavioral Consultants