Babies1st Core Objectives are the wellbeing and good mental health of families, especially those who do not meet the thresholds of statutory services, enhance babies and toddlers long-term outcomes, train early years professionals and raise awareness to the importance of early years.

Babies1st Core Objectives

Wellbeing and Mental Health

  • Objective: Improve the wellbeing and mental health of families during the 1001 Critical Days (from conception to age two), focusing on marginalized groups, those experiencing postnatal depression and anxiety, struggling with bonding, or feeling isolated.
  • Goal: Address inequalities in accessing early years interventions, particularly for families from ethnic minority groups.

Support Beyond Thresholds

  • Objective: Provide support to parents who do not meet the thresholds for additional services from social services or healthcare but would benefit from extra help.
  • Goal: Address the needs of the approximately 20-30% of parents who experience anxiety, depression, or other emotional difficulties in the first year post-birth, ensuring adequate support.

Enhancing Outcomes

  • Objective: Improve babies’ and toddlers’ long-term physical and mental health, speech development, and school readiness through cost-effective, evidence-based early interventions.
  • Goal: Reduce future involvement by Social and Educational Services and the NHS.

Training Early Years Professionals

  • Objective: Train Early Years professionals, including Babies1st personnel, towards attaining professional qualifications.
  • Goal: Share clinical knowledge with healthcare professionals, providing training to local authority and healthcare staff to deliver interventions directly to their clients.

Raising Awareness

  • Objective: Increase awareness among healthcare professionals and the local community about the importance of early interventions.
  • Goal: Utilize various platforms and events to disseminate information.

Developments Over the Last Year

Following the initial phase of setting up the new project in Hampden Way, Babies1st launched a new Baby Bonding project with 1-to-1 interventions in the North West Chilterns area, aligning with our core objective to reach more families.

We now offer Baby Bonding groups at three venues: Saunderton Lodge, a temporary housing facility in West Wycombe; Hampden Way Family Center (Wycombe); and Horspath Hub (Oxfordshire). Additionally, individual interventions are primarily conducted in families’ homes in Buckinghamshire.

Engagement Statistics:

  • Over the last year, we engaged with 64 families (up from 41 the previous year), totalling 132 individuals, including two fathers and two families with twins.
  • We conducted 133 group sessions and 57 individual sessions, amounting to 190 sessions in total.
  • Additionally, we performed 64 initial individual assessments, leading to 263 contact sessions overall.

Saunderton Lodge, Temporary Housing Facility: We engaged 15 highly vulnerable families, including refugees, illegal immigrants, and those facing mental health challenges, domestic violence, arranged marriages, and criminality in their family system. Our Baby Bonding groups provided an oasis of nurture and empathetic connection. We maintained contact with families after they moved when possible. Parents’ feedback included: “Looking at myself with my baby Tarek was an eye-opener. What I saw was so different from how I had felt. It helped me to understand that I was being sensitive to him and I was a good parent. I would recommend doing it, for sure.”

Hampden Way Family Center, High Wycombe: Starting in February 2023, this project engaged 22 families (46 individuals, including twins). Many participants experienced traumatic births, postnatal depression, neurodiversity, and difficulties bonding with their baby. The Baby Bonding group became a crucial support system, fostering friendships. Additionally, we provided individual sessions for a third of the parents. One parent gave the following feedback: “I did not like my baby at first, but I like her now.”

Horspath Community Center, Oxfordshire: Two practitioners-in-training facilitated 28 Baby Bonding group sessions with 14 families, totalling 116 attendances. This community-driven project had no external funding and was wholly conducted on a voluntary basis. It received positive feedback for its supportive environment: “It’s been really lovely getting to know other mums from the village, learning from one another and watching all the babies develop and grow – most of them will even be in the same school year together! A big thank you to our lovely facilitators.”

North West Chilterns 1-to-1 Project in Buckinghamshire: This new project initially focused on outreach, connecting with many local services, such as maternity, Stoke Mandeville Hospital, perinatal mental health, health visitors, psychology, talking therapies, church groups, and social care. We distributed 1,500 flyers. So far, we have reached seven families and provided 57 individual sessions, with a steady increase in referrals. A parent’s feedback included: “The short video recordings really helped me view myself differently as a mum and gave me confidence as a parent.”

Fran Ryan from Oxford University conducted a Service Improvement Report with recommendations, which we have been acting upon:

  1. Raising the Local Profile of Babies1st: Babies1st has significantly increased awareness among healthcare professionals through formal and informal presentations, engaging with various networks including family hubs, perinatal mental health workers, health visitors, midwives, family workers, psychotherapists, social workers, and educators. This outreach is reflected in the rising trend of client referrals. To further strengthen our profile, we expanded our online presence via our website and social media, designed and printed flyers for parents and professionals, and developed digital marketing strategies. We produced a parents’ feedback video.
  2. Information Provision: We are developing an information pack for new parents, explaining the rationale for the Baby Bonding work, group rules such as confidentiality, reasons for following absences, and the structure of attendance (e.g., a block of sessions following the school terms).
  3. Record-Keeping: We are continually improving our record-keeping systems and have developed an overall strategy to develop a database, as well as recording and monitoring attendances in all four projects.
  4. Supporting Referrals: We continue to liaise and collaborate with local organizations, such as music therapists, talking therapies, and the local hospital special care baby unit. By providing feedback to professionals who have referred clients to us, we strengthen professional ties and raise Babies1st’s profile, resulting in increased referrals. We ran an online CPD conference in June 2023 on “Baby Bonding – VIG in the First Critical 1001 Days,” with over 50 professionals attending, as well as other training events to raise awareness of the need for early years interventions.
  5. Supporting Parents from Referral to Groups: We are making further improvements in our initial meetings with clients and developing a checklist for practitioners to clarify attendance follow-up and ending criteria. We now have a named person to triage new families, liaise with practitioners, and facilitate an appropriate response, communicating with families before they join a group.
  6. Working with Parents Less Able to Attend: We continue to offer home visits to parents who are less able or reluctant to join a Baby Bonding group. We may offer joint visits with other early years professionals to establish initial rapport and trust. We liaise with the professional network around a family to understand their circumstances and collaborate with other professionals for the benefit of the family.
  7. Peer Support & Strengthening Ongoing Engagement: We have created a WhatsApp group in Hampden Way, providing peer support and additional ways for group members to communicate and bond with each other. They have started using it to also meet up outside the Baby Bonding groups.
  8. Outcomes & Monitoring: We introduced a new anonymized data recording system for participant attendance and updated our client consent form to include ethnicity data. This will enable us to better understand our clients, their demographics, and help us fine-tune our service offer. We are also working on streamlining our attendance data to better understand our clients’ needs and preferences.
  9. Parent Feedback and Involvement: At the end of each term, we ask for parents’ feedback on how we can improve our services, what we are doing well, and what we can improve. We also receive feedback from professionals who have referred to us. One of the parents who attended a Baby Bonding group is now a group facilitator, receiving internal training and contributing to our vision and developing our offer to parents.

Case Study (Names and identifying details have been changed): Estonia, a young professional, joined the Hampden Way group in May 2023 with concerns about her toddler’s language development. She shared her experiences of feeling numb post-birth and dealing with depression. Unexpectedly, she found herself pregnant again and continued attending the group with her toddler during her second pregnancy. After she gave birth, she immediately re-joined the group, which had become an important source of support. In all, Estonia attended group sessions for 10 months and also received six 1:1 VIG sessions, finding them invaluable. Her feedback highlights the significant impact of the help she received from Babies1st: “During my pregnancy, the support was amazing, and it’s continued postnatally, so soon after giving birth, which helped me from spiralling into depression again. I can’t thank Babies1st enough. “

  1. Future Service Improvement & Research Opportunities:
  • Continue offering all four projects free at the point of delivery.
  • Expand family support across Buckinghamshire.
  • Increase our social media presence.
  • Recruit additional practitioners to strengthen our clinical team.
  • Organize awareness events and conferences.
  • Produce further feedback videos.
  • Provide additional training for early years practitioners.
  • Collaborate with The Oxford Institute of Clinical Psychology Training and Research for a proof-of-concept research study, where Babies1st will train practitioners to use VIG with parents experiencing psychosis.

Monika Celebi

Clinical Director Babies1st

16/08/2024