Keeping the Baby in Mind: Infant Mental Health in Practice

Keeping the Baby in Mind builds on the expanding evidence pointing to the crucial importance of parents in facilitating their baby’s development, and brings together expert contributors to examine a range of innovative psychological and psychotherapeutic interventions that are currently being used to support parents and their infants. It not only provides an overview of the many projects that are now available but also makes recommendations for future practice and the way in which children’s services are organised.
The book brings together interventions and ways of working that can be used both universally to support parents during the transition to parenthood, and with high-risk groups of parents where for example there may be child protection concerns or parents experience severe mental health problems. Each chapter describes the evidence supporting the need for such interventions and the approach being developed, and concludes with a description of its evaluation.
Keeping the Baby in Mind marks a new and exciting phase in the development of interventions to support infant mental health and will be of interest across a wide range of disciplines from primary and community care to early years and Children’s Centre settings.

Jane Barlow is Professor of Public Health in the Early Years at Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick.

P.O. Svanberg, OBE is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, and was previously Project lead for the Sunderland Infant Programme. He is currently working in the FNP and CHPP Implementation, Department of Health.

Daws, Foreword. Barlow, Svanberg, Keeping the Baby in Mind. Part I: Universal Approaches. Underdown, The Power of Touch – Exploring Infant Massage. Douglas, Rheeston, The Solihull Approach: An Integrative Approach Across Agencies. Hawthorne, Promoting Development of the Early Parent-Infant Relationship Using the Neonatal Behavioural Assessment Scale. Parr, Joyce, ‘First Steps in Parenting’: Developing Nurturing Parenting Skills in Mothers and Fathers in the Pregnancy and Postnatal Period. Davis, The Family Partnership Model: Understanding the Processes of Prevention and Early Intervention. Barrows, The Importance of the Parental Couple in Parent-Infant Psychotherapy. Part II: Selective Approaches. Street, Empowering Parents Through ‘Learning Together’: The PEEP Model. Svanberg, Promoting a Secure Attachment through Early Screening and Interventions; The Sunderland Infant Programme. Rowe, Implementing the Nurse–Family Partnership in England; Lessons from the Pilot Programme. Marks, Hadley, Mckay, Reay, Gelman, Working with Parents from Black and Minority Ethnic Backgrounds in Children Centres. Part III: Indicated Approaches. Baradon, Gerhardt, Tucker, Working with the Hidden Obstacles in Parent-Infant Relating; Two Parent-Infant Psychotherapy Projects. Puckering, Mellow Babies: Mellow Parenting with Parents of Infants. Pawlby, Fernyhough, Enhancing the Relationship between mothers with severe mental illness and their infants. Tarleton, ‘Parenting with Support’: Supporting Parents with Learning Difficulties to Parent. Svanberg, Barlow, Developing Infant-Centred Services: The Way Forward.