Wigan Building Attachment and Bonds Support; Parent-Infant Mental Health Service
Our focus in Building Attachment and Bonds Support (BABS) is to help parents to be and new parents / carers 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.
What’s this service about?
We’re a small specialist team with extensive knowledge of early years. We’re 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.
Who do we see?
We’re here to help parents and direct carers who are experiencing difficulties understanding their baby/infant and who want to develop a greater sense of connectedness, understanding of and improve their relationship with their baby/infant. We are able to help parents ‘separate out’ all of the difficulties that get in the way and impact on the parent-infant bond and relationship.
Where do we work?
We try to find a setting where you and your baby or child feel comfortable. This could be your home, a children’s centre, health clinic or a children’s social care centre. Currently due to COVID-19 we have restricted options and most contact is completed in your home or virtually.
What should I expect?
We will contact you once we receive your referral and arrange a time to meet with you. At your first appointment, you and your baby will have a chance to meet with a therapist to talk about what is going well, what isn’t going so well, and whether we are the right service to help. It will be an opportunity to talk about any worries you might have. Both parents are welcome but we will work with whoever comes along to the appointment. We will focus on you and your babies / infants wishes / goals and ensure your care is centred around these whilst considering how we will work together to meet these goals.
Service information and self referral links are available through our webpage: www.nwbh.nhs.uk/babs-wigan
Alternatively please don’t hesitate to contact us on 01942 885 870