In 1935 a group of practitioners in the new medical field of child psychiatry started work to establish and expand mutual contacts in spite of the social and political turmoil surrounding World War II.

[3] Georges Heuyer, the then head of the "Clinique annexe de neuropsychiatrie infantile" at the Salpêtrière in Paris, organized and chaired the first congress there, calling it the "Premier Congrès international de psychiatrie infantile, Paris, 24 juillet au 1er août 1937" ["First international conference on child psychiatry"].

[2][page needed] The name was changed again during the Lisbon congress of 1958, this time to the "International Association for Child Psychiatry and Allied Professions" (IACP&AP).

Today, the IACAPAP is registered in Geneva, Switzerland, as a non-government organization (NGO) structured as a corporation and empowered as a juridical entity according to the Swiss Civil Code and the Constitution.

[10] The Secretary General as of 2000 was Ian M. Goodyer, a professor who founded the department of Child and Adolescent psychiatry at Cambridge University.