2023 IECMH Training

Judy Martens

Judy is the past President of the Virginia Association for Infant Mental Health and serves on the Early Childhood Mental Health Virginia Advisory Board. She has over thirty years of experience working in the fields of infant mental health and early care and education. Moving to Virginia, she served as the Director of Professional Development for the Early Childhood Division in Alexandria for eleven years where she was responsible for providing training for family child care providers and center staff. To meet the needs of a culturally and linguistically diverse population of providers, she developed a forty five hour curriculum focused on child development and early care and education using English as a Second Language strategies. Prior to moving to Virginia, Judy worked as clinician providing mental health services to infants, young children and their caregivers in Michigan, Northern New York and Florida. In addition to her clinical work in Florida, she developed a relationship-based, trauma focused model for providing mental health services for Head Start Programs in two counties. She is currently self-employed as a consultant and Infant Mental Health Mentor providing reflective supervision for several groups and individuals across the state including Healthy Families and the Child and Family Network Centers in Northern Virginia. 

Judy has presented nationally on issues related to Infant Mental Health, relationship based practices and the development of curriculum and training methods designed to meet the needs of multicultural and linguistically diverse populations of family child care providers and early educators using English as Second Language strategies.