Be the support families need and remember.

CAPPA Infant and Family Educators fill an important role in educating and supporting families and the community by providing comprehensive, evidence-based information. As respected professionals, CAPPA Infant and Family Educators work in public-health clinics, hospitals, care-providers’ offices, and private settings throughout the world.

Infant and Family Educators work with families during pregnancy and postpartum; offering support, encouragement, information, and referrals as needed. Infant and Family Educators can be found working in a variety of settings to offer their services to families. Families can find them working as public health educators, hospital/community educators, in care providers’ offices and in private practice as educators.

Infant and Family Educators are educators, not clinicians. They therefore work with the healthcare system by encouraging and promoting excellent communication between the new family and the health care team, encouraging informed decision making and self-advocacy, supporting the choices of the new family, providing non-clinical care, and offering appropriate referrals when their observance uncovers situations that require healthcare attention or support.

CAPPA Infant and Family Educators are non-clinical professionals. CAPPA Infant and Family Educators do not dispense medical advice, diagnose medical conditions, interpret medical diagnoses or clinical results, perform clinical procedures, or prescribe/administer medications or treatments of any kind. Educators do not offer information that directs families to act against medical advice.

CAPPA does not train its certified professionals to prescribe, perform, or provide complementary/alternative therapies including, but not limited to, essential oils, placenta medicine, herbal treatments, etc. CAPPA professionals do not prescribe, perform, or provide alternative/complementary therapies as part of their role as a CAPPA certified professional. Those who are trained, certified, licensed, or a recipient of a degree in these therapies are required to present these services as separate from their role as a CAPPA certified professional.

CAPPA Infant and Family Educators work within CAPPA’s standards of practice to uphold the following (available to read as individual documents): code of conduct, a grievance policy, mission statement, vision statement, organization philosophy, and social media policy. CAPPA Infant and Family Educators use current evidence-based information in their practice. They maintain their knowledge and skills through continuing education. They work within the legal framework of their individual community and region.