Introduction to Wigan’s Building Attachments and Bonds Support – A Parent Infant Mental Health Service
Evidence shows that the first years of an infant’s life have the greatest influence on emotional, cognitive and psychological development. The parent to infant relationship is key to ensuring this development. Parents nurture of their baby is a known factor which enables the baby to have the best start in life.
We know it’s not easy. Often despite expectations, parenting can be a challenge and can evoke many mixed emotions. This can be triggered by your own experience of being parented, social health or economic stress, personal relationship and everyday stresses (such as the current challenges of Covid-19).
The following feelings can be a part of parenting that many of us experience:
- Feeling down or anxious
- Having a difficult birth
- Not feeling the bond you expected to feel
- Difficulty feeding
- Worrying about your ability to cope as a parent
- Difficult events from the past
- Worrying regularly about your baby or toddler
- Not feeling good enough
- Feeling like you aren’t doing the right
- Feeling isolated
However, if you’re experiencing these feelings on a regular basis you may find it useful to access some support.
What support is available?
The great news is that there is now a brand new parent infant mental health service in Wigan and Leigh called Building Attachments and Bonds Support – or BABS for short.
Our focus in BABS is to help parents to be and new parents who feel that they need more support to form those important bonded relationships with their baby or toddler.
Our team will work alongside mums, dads and direct carers, from conception up until the age of three years to help them strengthen their bond with their baby or toddler.
About our BABS team
We are a small specialist team with extensive knowledge of early years. We are trained to work with parents and infants and each team member is passionate about supporting families during this time in their lives.
Our approach is to work alongside you and build supportive relationships whilst thinking how best to help identify and make changes to improve your relationship with your baby or toddler.
We support parents to recognise the many challenges that can influence and impact on the parent-infant bond and developing relationship, to allow for a stronger attachment. We will remain available to you and your family for as long as you want our support up until your child is three years old.
Our team are community based and work across Wigan to make accessing our support easy for you. We are also able to offer phone and video calls.
What will we offer?
We’re a new service and what we will be offering and developing is:
- Online self-referral access to our service
- Online self-help advice and information
- Telephone consultation and support
- My Baby and Me drop-in sessions
- Awareness groups for parents to be
- Individual time with one of our team
- Work with other professionals who maybe involved in your care
- Enhanced specialist interventions to help develop stronger attachments between you and your baby or toddler if required
For more information about the Wigan Building Attachments and Bonds Support service please contact us on 01942 764 448 or visit our website: https://www.gmmh.nhs.uk/building-attachments-and-bonds-support
