iHV supports Infant Mental Health Awareness Week #IMHAW2025

Today marks the start of Infant Mental Health Awareness Week (#IMHAW2025). Organisations and services working with families across the UK get a chance to celebrate the vital work they do to support babies’ earliest relationships with their parents and caregivers.

Alison Morton, Chief Executive of the Institute of Health Visiting, said:

“At the iHV, we know how important early relationships are in shaping a baby’s lifelong chances. And we know how important health visitors are in creating a safe psychological space for parents to explore the joys and uncertainties of new parenthood.

“That’s why we are excited to be leading a second phase of research, funded by The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, around health visitors’ use of the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB). The expansion of the ADBB, and its modified version, in a wider range of health visiting services will enable us to consider future sustainability of the model and help to direct the right support to the families who most need it.”

Health visitors are being trained in sites across all UK nations to better observe and interpret the ways that babies communicate through their facial expressions, eye contact, sounds and movements. By using the ADBB observation aid, health visitors can help parents discover the amazing social capacities of their babies, the ways babies show that they want to be in a relationship, and the subtle ways they indicate if something in their environment is causing them stress.

In this short film, created by The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood for #IMHAW2025, two of the health visitors participating in the study clearly articulate the importance of early relationships in establishing good mental health. It showcases the knowledge and skill of health visitors to support all families to lay the best foundations for their babies.

See the short film on The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood's Linked In account

See the short film on The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood's Instagram account

Hilda Beauchamp, Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Lead at the Institute of Health Visiting, said:

“I am so proud of the commitment of the health visitors involved in this study. They are achieving very high certification in ADBB, demonstrating robust knowledge and skill in their observation and understanding of babies’ communication and have been excited to use their enhanced skills to support families up and down the UK. This short film showcases the knowledge, skill and passion of health visitors in supporting all families to lay the best foundations for their babies. We know health visitors are amazing – and it’s great to be able to share a glimpse of the amazing work they do!”

The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood has shared a second short film as they caught up with some of the brilliant health visitors who are part of the second phase of the “ADBB” pilot as well as iHV’s Perinatal & Infant Mental Health Lead, Hilda Beauchamp – see video below This is a study of how a simple, yet powerful observation tool, can be used by professionals to spot early signs of emotional distress in babies through their eye contact, expressions, sounds, and activity.

Click here for more information about the ADBB study

Special thanks to the families, the health visiting services in Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust and West Street Family Hub, Scunthorpe who contributed to the film.

iHV IMH conference recordings now available!

Last week, we were delighted to welcome over 230 people to our fourth annual PIMH Conference, which took place virtually on Wednesday 15 June as part of Infant Mental Health Awareness Week where the overall theme of the week was understanding early trauma.

And, we are pleased to say that the conference recordings from Early Trauma and the Art of Repair are now live!

Did you buy a ticket to attend the IMH conference?

If you bought tickets to attend the conference, you are now able to rewatch the recordings via our conference website. The conference recordings and presentations that the speakers are happy for us to disseminate after the conference have been added to your live agenda for you to watch.

Just go to your live agenda (on the conference website) and login using your conference delegate username and password which you used to access the conference.

Do you want to pay to view the conference recordings?

If you missed the conference but still want to view the recordings, then please do not worry, you can buy access to the recordings today with Pay to View!

Discounted Rate
If you are an iHV Member ensure you have your membership number ready to use as a discount code to secure your member discount.

If you do not know your membership number, please email [email protected]. For any other details on how to purchase a ticket individually or for a group booking, please email [email protected].

Go to IMH Conference Pay to View page

About iHV IMH Conference: Early Trauma and the Art of Repair

Our IMH conference was based on the Japanese concept of ‘Kintsugi’ where broken or damaged ceramics are not neglected or discarded but, instead, attract attention and respect and are repaired with meticulous care. Cracks and breaks are infused with precious gold lacquer, rendering the original fault lines strong and beautiful. Every time we see a piece of Kintsugi we know that there is a story behind it, that someone has cared enough about it to have it mended.

We applied the Kintsugi metaphor to understanding early trauma; how the cracks and breaks occur, the artistry available for repair, and the stories behind the gold veins. We had a wonderful line-up of highly respected speakers to lead us through this journey, including:

Alan Stein, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at University of Oxford
Tessa Baradon, Consultant Parent-Infant Psychotherapist
Sally Hogg, Head of Policy and Communications at Parent-Infant Foundation
Pauline Lee, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Joint Clinical Lead
Vicky Nevin, Policy and Public Affairs Officer, NSPCC
Martha Sercombe, Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Health Visitor, Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board
Vicky Armstrong, Art Psychotherapist and Researcher, University of Dundee and Dundee Contemporary Arts
Dr Josephine Ross, Senior Lecturer, University of Dundee
Rachel Stephen, Health Visitor, Co-author and Emotional Wellbeing at Work Project Co-ordinator, Institute of Health Visiting

There were opportunities to hear of award-winning innovations, contribute to discussions, be updated about policy development, and reflect on how health visiting, as part of the wider family mental health and wellbeing systems, can contribute to promoting good infant mental health.

See our short collection of tweets:

iHV supports launch of PIP UK’s Rare Jewels report

At the start of Infant Mental Health Awareness Week 2019, the iHV is delighted to support the launch of PIP UK’s report “Rare Jewels” on Specialised parent-infant relationship teams in the UK – published today, Monday 10 June 2019, at the APPG Conception to Age Two meeting in Parliament.

iHV Director, Dr Cheryll Adams, at launch of PIP UK’s Rare Jewels report at the APPG Conception to Age Two in Parliament

Alongside its focus on specialised teams, the report highlights the important role health visitors play in enabling good IMH:

“Health visitors play an important role in promoting parent-infant relationships as they have the opportunity to work with every family during this important period”.

“Nice Guidance for postnatal care states that assessment for emotional attachment should be carried out at each postnatal contact and home visits should be used as an opportunity to promote parent- or mother-to-baby emotional attachment”.

We are particularly pleased to see the value of specialist IMH health acknowledged. We look forward to strengthening this when we publish the findings from our own recent iHV survey into Infant Mental Health later this week.

The report, ‘Rare Jewels’, highlights the shocking lack of mental health provision for children aged 2 and under with data suggesting that 42% of Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) areas in England CAMHS services will not accept referrals for children aged 2 and under.

The report makes several recommendations for local and national decision makers about how they could support the development of specialised provision. These include:

Collecting data disaggregated by age to ensure services are accessible to, and accessed by, children of all ages.
Ensuring there is clear accountability at a national and local level for commissioning mental health services to meet the needs of all children.
Creating a ringfenced transformation budget to support local investment in services for the first 1001 days of life.
Setting out clear implementation plans for how commitments to improve mental health provision will be realised for all children, including those 2 and under.

Governments across the UK have made commitments to increase early intervention, to improve children’s mental health and to close inequalities in outcomes.

The iHV supports this report’s call for them to provide focused and determined leadership and the investment required to translate their commitments into a reality to give every baby the best start in life.

Please do share the report with your networks and on any social media platforms using the hashtags #rarejewels #IMHAW19 #healthvisitors #infantmentalhealth. Please do also link to us using the handle @iHealthVisiting and @earlypotential

Go to PIP UK to download the Rare Jewels report

Infant Mental Health Awareness Week 2018

It’s here!

Infant Mental Health Awareness Week 2018 (#IMHAW18) takes this week from Monday June 11 to Friday 15 June, and will focus on promoting “The Importance of Attachment”.

The Association for Infant Mental Health (AIMH) is keen to highlight the work around infant mental health during the week – so please contact [email protected] and tell them what you are doing to contribute to Infant Mental Health Awareness Week through activities; discussions and communications with parents and children – any information to showcase your work within this area.

Please click here to see all the national events taking place this week in support of #IMHAW18.

Please click here to see AIMH’s programme of activities for the week.

The Twitter hashtag for the week is #IMHAW18 – so do follow the week’s activity online.