It’s Infant Mental Health Awareness Week 2021

© Daniel Thomas

The theme for Infant Mental Health Awareness Week 2021 is including infants in 

children and young people’s mental health.

The Parent-Infant Foundation says “The goal of this year’s IMHAW theme is to encourage everyone working in children and young people’s mental health policies, strategies and services to think about and include babies. Children and young people’s mental health should refer to the mental health of all children from 0-18 and beyond, but too often it is focussed on older children.

There is a “baby blindspot”. We are encouraging everyone to think and talk about infant, children and young people’s mental health, and to consider how babies’ mental health needs can be met.

We will be using the hashtags #IMHAW21 and #IncludingInfants

Early relationships influence a baby’s brain, and in particular their social and emotional development. This early development plays an important role in how well a child will go on to achieve many of the key outcomes that parents, the public, professionals and policy makers care about.

For example, babies who have had good early relationships start school best equipped to be able to make friends and learn. This increases the chances that they will achieve their potential in later life and contribute to society…..”

Here at Powys Association of Voluntary Organisations we decided to focus on sharing information about some of the key activities going on in Powys around improving infant mental health and wellbeing.

Lucy Taylor – Startwell Development Officer, PAVO

Lucy works closely with colleagues from the Health and Statutory sector under the Emotional Health and Wellbeing workstream in Powys to build a good start for all babies from pre conception onwards in the home and community up to support and health services for those who need them.

These goals sit under the Startwell element of the Powys Health & Care strategy.

You can contact Lucy by emailing lucy.taylor@pavo.org.uk or ringing 01597 822191.

© Kelly Sikkema

Jolene Duggan – Chair of the Powys Perinatal Mental Health Steering Group

“Healthy, social and emotional development during the first 1001 days lays the foundations for lifelong mental and physical health. At least 15% of children in the general population experience a disorganised attachment and this figure is higher for children facing adversity.” Parent Infant Foundation

Jolene says: “Attachment is the process, as well as the quality, of the relationship an infant forms with caregivers. Attachment can occur with biological and adoptive mothers, fathers, step-parents, grandparents and any other consistent caring person in the child’s life. A baby’s initial relationship experiences with primary caregivers creates the infrastructure for subsequent relationships, how the child views connection, how she experiences herself, and the world around her, is influenced by her early relationships. With repeated experiences of predictable care, the infant learns about trust and security. Growing up in an environment infused with safety and intentionality ensures healthy social and emotional development.

Here in Powys we are proactively trying to raise the awareness of the importance of Perinatal and Infant Mental Health by delivering the Institute of Health Visiting (IHV) Multi-Agency Champion training Programme. Prevention and early intervention are fundamental, and every professional working with families should be observing the interaction between a parent and infant.”

“It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men.” Frederick Douglass.

You can read more about the work of the Perinatal Mental Health Steering Group in our blog post: Perinatal Mental Health Services in Powys from 2019.

Mums Matter courses from Mind

Ros Sandhu is a Mums Matter Facilitator and Children & Young People Practitioner at Brecon & District Mind which offers the Mums Matter courses (as do Ystradgynlais Mind and Mid & North Powys Mind). Ros told us: “Infant mental health starts with maternal mental health, and as such it is mums who need support. In a recent article in The Guardian, Eliane Glaser put it succinctly when she wrote: “women are trying too hard and society isn’t trying hard enough.”

The Mums Matter Project aims to support mums who are at risk of, or suffering from, mild to moderate postnatal depression. Covid has left a larger number than ever of new mums feeling isolated and unsupported as they start their journey into motherhood, and in Brecon Mind we have been delivering the project using the online platform Zoom throughout the pandemic.

At the heart of the project is the idea that happy, contented, supported and confident mums produce mentally healthy, happy and secure infants and then children.

The insights of Donald Winnicott, a paediatrician and child psychoanalyst in the 1950s, provide a useful place to start the course and mums gain enormous comfort from his observations and teachings. His widely accepted theory is that mums need to learn to feel ok with being, “good enough” rather than striving for perfection. This takes the pressure off mums; none more so than mums living through a pandemic and surrounded by unrealistic images of motherhood on social media and little else! The concept of “good enough” can help to allow a greater sense of ease in their lives, which their babies will benefit from.

Winnicott also found that infants need to observe and experience the full array of human emotions within a warm, secure and loving environment. As such mums are reminded that’s its ok to be fully (at times even a bit messily) human so that their babies and children learn that it is ok to be the same.”

You can read more about the Mums Matter courses from Mind:

Mums Matter in a Changing World

Support for new mums in lockdown