World Health day: support for mums with their mental health

07 Apr 25

Today is World Health Day and marks a year-long campaign on maternal and newborn health. The campaign is called Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures and focusses on increasing efforts to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths, and to prioritise women’s longer term health and wellbeing.

The Trust recognises the importance of early intervention in childhood and within our community perinatal team, we have specialist parent infant therapists and practitioners who support mums with their relationship with their baby. The focus is on bonding and building healthy relationships.

Motherhood can be challenging and there are many reasons why mums might need support. Some may themselves have had traumatic and difficult experiences as children with their parents; others may have difficulty bonding, adjusting to parenthood or feel overly anxious.

The team works with new mums experiencing mental health difficulties, from conception to two years old and also supports mums accessing the adult community mental health teams.

The support offered is varied and can include baby massage, help with understanding baby’s cues, video feedback to strengthen relationships, confidence building and reflective parenting – where mum and practitioner think together about episodes of interaction between themselves and the baby from both their own and their baby’s perspective.

The team also offers a circle of security – an eight week online group course focusing on parents developing a secure relationship with their baby. This is useful for parents experiencing difficulties with overprotection/ ‘letting go’, allowing their child close /soothing their baby or difficulties with overly harsh or collapsing boundaries. Parents are supported to reflect on their own strengths & struggles & how their own experiences impact on parenting.

To find out more about the parent infant team see here: Your relationship with your baby

To learn more about the community perinatal team and the referral process visit: Hertfordshire Community Perinatal Team

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World Health day: support for mums with their mental health