It is Infant Mental Health Awareness week this week and the Health Visitors from Hull’s City Health Care Partnership are promoting the importance of developing loving relationships with their newborn babies.
To support the week, the Hull City Health Care Partnership have sent some information to Mumbler to share:
Health Visitors have always promoted the key aspects to good mental health through the Five to Thrive training they undertook from Kate Cairns. The five key aspects are –
The Health Visitors have also had training from the Institiute of Health Visiting around the significance of infant mental health and how the first two years are crucial for the developing brain and longterm mental health. Infant mental health is really a vital thing to be aware of because babies learn daily from us and the people around them. Babies can do a lot more than we realize in terms of social and emotional intelligence and nurturing this is paramount. Valuing them, giving eye contact, using loving voices gentle touch and reassurance when they are in distress builds the foundations for secure mental health.
It is a myth that responding to babies’ cries will make them dependent on parents. In fact the opposite is true, in that responding to their needs is key and is the springboard to confident independence later in life. Leaving babies to cry for prolonged periods actually increases their stress hormone and long term this impacts on brain growth and development. This is reflected in the standards from UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative programme which CHCP has achieved. As infant feeding is an integral part of babies brain growth and development we encourage responsive feeding and promote breastfeeding as the mothering hormone oxytocin is released when breastfeeding. Also breast fed babies are held close, have good eye contact with their mother and are comforted by her soothing voice.
The choices parents make about how to nurture their children can have very positive impacts on babies social and emotional development and their ability to build healthy relationships. The Health Visitors will be putting on displays in the child health clinics this week and will be talking to parents about how important their role is in nurturing the children of our future.
Written by Debbie Jackson, Infant Feeding Co-ordinator, City Health Care Partnership CIC
For more information about Infant Mental Health Awareness Week visit their website here.
