Annual Report 2021-2022

Our Response to the Pandemic

We were aware of parents’ isolation at home with their new babies, so we offered online groups to support those who either were afraid or struggled to leave the house with their babies. These groups were small, but important to these new families, who included those with postnatal depression, separated from their wider family network including elderly parents. They were helped to express their increased anxieties, and isolation. They included a parent with twins, and a parent with mental health problems. All suffered from the impact of the pandemic.

Three of our senior Babies1st practitioners delivered these groups pro bono a total of 4 blocks or 18 online Baby Bonding group sessions, attended by 10 dyads. The feedback from all parents was extremely positive, and they appreciated the connections they made with other parents and Babies1st practitioners, which otherwise would not have happened.

Training local volunteers

Our ethos is to train practitioners in Vide ofo Interaction Guidance (VIG ) and to make VIG available to all parents and babies who want this, to encourage attuned parenting and support the development of parental confidence.
We currently have 3 volunteer practitioners, who are offering VIG under supervision of Babies1st. We provided 34 hours of individual client contact, reaching 3 families (one of them high need).

Creating grassroots initiatives

We have been training 2 local volunteers in Oxford, one of them a mother, who previously attended our Baby Bonding groups, to now themselves facilitate a group for parents and babies under the umbrella of Babies1st. This new initiative has been established in collaboration with a local children centre. The volunteers’ work will be actively supported by Babies1st and supervised by our senior practitioners.

Community Building

Following an emergency referral by Wexham Park hospital to support a mother who had been moved out of their area, we came across Saunderton Lodge, a temporary housing project in Buckinghamshire, where residents, many of them with great challenges, such as mental health problems, domestic violence, debts etc have been housed. We discovered that no support was offered to these families, many of them having children under five. We started to forge links with the managers of Saunderton Lodge, and the residents. Due to the temporary nature of the accommodation, we needed to be flexible and adjust, working with whoever was present at the time, and open to receive help.

Since January we spent 62 hours setting up, liaising and engaging the community of staff and families, some of whom with very complex needs. We reached and contacted at total of 10 families. We provided 4 families so far with VIG interventions. This demonstrates the many hours needed to engage a population, which is transient, often traumatised, not trusting of services, and with complicated disorganised lives. However, it is exactly these families who need most help and who easily fall through the gaps of service provisions.