What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can improvement be used to reduce delays accessing health and care services'?

There is currently very little mental health support for families with infants and young children. Parents and carers struggle to find support when they need it most (Start for Life Report 2021), accessing care at emergency points or not at all. 0-3 years is a time of rapid development when babies’ brains are shaped by their experiences, particularly relationships. Research shows this lays foundations for future social, emotional, cognitive development. Attachment difficulties are a significant predictor of mental ill-health and associated with psychopathology later in life.

ABC Method is a highly-evidenced, short-term intervention we’re using to support 6-24 month olds and their parents for the first time in the UK at BrightPIP. Families are empowered to connect with their child, using intensive, strengths-focused feedback to nurture, follow their child’s lead and respond positively to their children. This uses video and ‘in the moment’ feedback, in hour-long sessions in the family home over 12 weeks.

What does your project aim to achieve?

By embedding this new ABC approach into parent-infant therapy services, we will achieve the following outcomes:

Target isolated parents who are in crisis and most in need of parent-infant relationship support and babies who are most at risk of developing later mental health difficulties.

Help parents re-interpret children’s behavioural signals and respond sensitively.

Enhance children’s behavioral and regulatory capabilities.

Foster the development of secure attachments between children and their parents.

Redesign care at an earlier, preventative stage to make best use of the time and skills of those using and providing services.

ABC partners with parents to support young children exposed to early adversity, rigorously tested through multiple RCT and longitudinal research. There has been continued partnership with communities deeply affected by historical racism and poverty. Remarkable results were found with children’s attachment, biological regulation, impulse control, language, brain development, and even DNA methylation that persist at least into adolescence.

How will the project be delivered?

BrightPIP will include ABC in the core parent-infant therapy offer to all vulnerable families referred in Brighton and Hove. This project will be led by Dr Kerry Taylor, Clinical Psychologist, Play Therapist and experienced Clinical Director.

We will work with 10 families, referred by our referral partners including Midwives, Health Visitors and Social Workers. Each family will access 12 sessions, 120 sessions in total over 18 months.

Practitioners will work towards becoming trainers in ABC whilst also completing requirements to become clinical supervisors and ‘in the moment’ supervisors, so that second and third cohorts of practitioners can be trained as soon and cost-effectively as possible.  When training and supervision can be shifted to our local area this will increase long-term sustainability.

This is an embedded community-led approach. Practitioners who train in ABC are often parents who graduated from the programme, local health care or early years practitioners alongside those already working as parent-infant therapists.

How is your project going to share learning?

We will:

• Use evidence and learning gathered, work together with commissioners and service leads, and carefully plan implementation of this approach across more areas of the city, reaching more families.
• Share all learning from the service with Q members, local and national parent-infant mental health practitioners, academic research teams and local and national Social Care and Health service commissioners. The ABC method presents a unique opportunity to pilot an early intervention approach for supporting parent infant-mental health that is simple, effective and not expensive.
• Continue actively training local Social Workers, Health Visitors, Early Years workers and neonatal teams on infant mental health awareness and ABC method in Brighton and Hove and with Association for Infant Mental Health members.
• Extend and share training with Q members and across the wider system, in addition to the Parent Infant Foundation and World Association for Infant Mental Health international conference.