• promote throughout Alabama, the healthy social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development of young children through supportive and nurturing relationships from conception through five years of age;

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• facilitate interdisciplinary cooperation among individuals concerned with promoting conditions that will bring about the optimal development of young children and child-caregiver and child-parent relationships;

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• encourage the realization that early childhood is a sensitive period in the psychosocial development of individuals;

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• promote education, research, and study of the effects of mental development during early childhood on later social/emotional/behavioral and psychopathological development;

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• promote education, professional development, and expertise of a cadre of professionals concerning the mental health of young children, parents, families and other caregivers of young children;

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• promote mental health in early childhood by developing evidence-based practices and/or informing programs about promotion, prevention, intervention, and care.