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Relationships are everything!
Sometimes things can get in the way of you enjoying your relationship with your baby, such as depression, anxiety, a difficult birth, worries about your baby, or your own parenting experience and difficult events from the past. Having a baby can activate so many of our own insecurities and vulnerabilities as parents.
By offering specialist, therapeutic parent infant mental health support during pregnancy and in the postnatal period – we can help parents to 'separate out' their own past and present struggles and issues, which without this specialist support, can have a huge impact on the parent-infant bond, relationship and mental health of both.
We believe that most parents want to be ‘the best possible parent they can be to their baby’ (and be a better parent than their own parents!). We want to support parents to build secure attachments and loving bonds with their babies and go onto break tough negative life cycles which get in the way of what is the most important relationship – the parent infant relationship.
We provide easy to engage, non-judgemental parent infant therapy and support, for pregnant women, new parents and their partners, who struggle with their emotional wellbeing, other vulnerabilities, and who have concerns about their bonding and relationship with their baby. We are a team of clinical psychologists parent infant therapists and multi-disciplinary professionals and volunteers who are passionate and committed to supporting parents.
We are specialists in supporting mums, dad and carers and infants with their mental health, emotional wellbeing and struggles from their babies and building happy, secure and loving relationships with their babies. Sessions are offered to families either in the family home or in the community.
- parents who may be struggling to bond with their baby
- families who are open to past or present safeguarding services
- parents who struggle with their mental health and wellbeing
- families who have issues with drug or alcohol use or domestic abuse
- parents with mild to moderate mental health vulnerability or past trauma or abuse
- or those who may have had other children removed from their care in the past.
Parents accepted for support from BABS will be assessed using the following:
- Psychological or psychotherapeutic assessment of parent infant mental health, bond and attachment relationship via clinical interview sessions
- Parent infant observation
- Collaborative, joint assessments, and ‘think family’ assessments.
Referrals can be made by any professional such as a health visitor, midwife, family nurse, GP, Social Worker, Early Help Worker.
We welcome telephone enquiries to discuss suitability prior to referral. Please call us on 0151 351 8801. Referrals can be sent to Cmicb-ss.merseycarebabs@nhs.net
Information for professionals
We welcome telephone enquiries to discuss suitability prior to referral. Please call us on 0151 351 8801.
Our service accepts referrals for parents and carers in Sefton who are pregnant or have a baby aged up to six months, who are struggling with their own wellbeing and/or struggling in their relationship with their baby. Although the referral window is short, we can work with families up until the baby is two. Referrals can be sent to Cmicb-ss.merseycarebabs@nhs.net
In addition to the clinical support we provide to families, we offer specialist parent infant mental health training and consultation to multi-agency professionals locally.
For information on how to refer in Halton, Knowsley, Southport and Forbmy, south Sefton, and Warrington, visit our GP and referrers sections.
BABS offers clinical and therapeutic support to families. Key in providing this support is joint working, training, and consultation with multi-agency professionals. These can include midwives, health visitors, GPs, Early Help workers and social workers.
We work closely with health colleagues and care professionals to make sure families are fully supported.
We work in partnership with:
- Maternity Trusts
- Perinatal and mental health services
- Infant feeding teams
- GPs
- Wellbeing Centres and Family Hubs
- Children’s Social Care
- Local Early Help Services
- Talking Therapies Services
- Third Sector and Voluntary Organisations
- CAMHS.
At your first appointment we will aim to understand a little bit more about how things have been for you and how we can help you.
This will involve talking with a practitioner about some parts of pregnancy and your life, before and after becoming a parent.
This will include us completing questionnaires with you (known as Patient Reported Outcome Measures or PROMs for short).
Further information
If you’d like to find out more about how BABS can help, speak to your GP, midwife, health visitor or any other multi-agency professional who is supporting you.
We accept referrals from midwives, health visitors, GPs, social workers and other multi-agency professionals working with families. An initial home visit will take place within four weeks of referral being accepted. We welcome telephone enquiries to discuss suitability prior to referral
They will be able to refer you to our service if they think we can help. Referrals can be sent to Cmicb-ss.merseycarebabs@nhs.net or call us on 0151 351 8801.
We welcome telephone enquiries to discuss suitability prior to referral.
Where we are
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We can meet you at a children's centre or local family wellbeing hub
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or we can visit you at home.
What the parents we work with have to say
