Working with families and practitioners to support parent-infant relationships
Working with families and practitioners to support parent-infant relationships
An evaluation of the LEAP Parent and Infant Relationship Service (PAIRS)
Learn how LEAP’s Parent and Infant Relationship Service (PAIRS) has made a positive impact on the local early years workforce and families: supporting better parent-infant bonds, improved confidence in parenting skills and improved mental health.
Discover how PAIRS built the capacity of Lambeth’s early years ecosystem to support parent-infant relationships and how it targeted social inequality in a highly diverse population based in areas of deprivation.
Hear from key stakeholders how professional awareness of infant mental health and parent-infant relationships has improved through training, reflective supervision and consultation provided by PAIRS.
Background
LEAP’s Parent and Infant Relationship Service (PAIRS) is delivered by South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. The service offers:
- Parent-infant psychotherapy and Together Time (a therapeutic parent-baby group)
- Specialist assessments and other parent-infant interventions
- Consultation, reflective supervision and training to the local early years workforce
- Activities to promote infant mental health and a healthy parent-infant relationship
In 2023, PAIRS was awarded the AiMH Together Award. This was in recognition of the team’s collaborative and creative work to improve infant mental health outcomes for babies in their community.
This is an evaluation of PAIRS’ workforce- and family-focused activities. It employs mixed methods, including interviews with parents, the PAIRS team and local stakeholders, as well as analysis of routinely collected data.
The evaluation comes at an important time for parent-infant relationship services. Evidence of the impact of parent-infant relationship teams is growing and policy is starting to reflect the importance of babies’ experiences in their environment and with their caregivers.
Key findings
- PAIRS has made a positive impact on the local early years workforce and families
- Building capacity within the local early years ecosystem is vital to the success of the service
- Professional awareness of infant mental health and parent-infant relationships has improved with support from PAIRS
- PAIRS has reached the diverse population that lives in the LEAP area, including families facing multiple disadvantages
- PAIRS has established good working relationships with partners, leading to referrals from several different services and an increasing number of families supported over time
Delve deeper
Qualitative and quantitative findings