The Center for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience exists to make rigorous, culturally-valid understanding of children’s minds available wherever a child is — not only where specialists happen to be.
Mission
Understanding before labels.
We train practitioners to see the whole child — strengths first, family alongside, culture respected — and we build the instruments and evidence that make this possible in real-world settings. Our work spans cognition and affect together, because a child’s thinking and feeling cannot be separated.
CCAN sits within the NEPAS Ecosystem and works with clinical, community, and foundation partners so that assessment leads to support, not exclusion.
fig. — the whole child, understood across every lens, never reduced to a label
Our approach
Principles that run through every domain.
P / 01
Strengths first
Every profile begins with what a child does well. Support builds on existing capacities before anything else.
P / 02
Culturally situated
Behaviour, tasks, and norms are interpreted within a child’s real ecological, linguistic, and community context.
P / 03
Multilingual by design
Assessment happens in the child’s strongest language; bilingual comparison is a scored part of the method, not an afterthought.
P / 04
Multi-informant
Caregiver, teacher, child, and clinician each contribute. No single voice defines the profile.
P / 05
Family-empowering
Families receive a plain-language, home-language summary and recommendations calibrated to their real resources.
P / 06
Trauma-informed
Pacing is child-led. Adverse experiences are explored with care and always set within protective factors.
Partners
Who we work with.
NEPAS
The ecosystem hub for delivery.
SOLARA
Family & individual neurodiversity support.
Pasca Medical Foundation
Mission and community partner, Nairobi.
Neurowell Clinics
Accessible, high-quality neurodevelopmental care that empowers children, supports families, and promotes inclusive education worldwide.
Neurowell Women Initiative
Empowering mothers and caregivers of neurodivergent children through guidance, emotional support, referrals, and community-based assistance.
Neurowell Foundation
Global fundraising that widens access to Neurowell clinical care for families who could not otherwise reach it.
Build the future of child assessment with us.
Whether you train, certify, or collaborate on research, there is a place for you at CCAN.
Welcome to CCAN. I can explain our mission, whole-child approach, principles, partners, and ecosystem.
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