Time Space Compassion in suicide prevention - practice stories - Volume 2

6. Wee Minds Matter

Specialist mental health support for infants and their parents or caregivers during pregnancy, birth and up to 3 years of age

Wee Minds Matter is Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s infant mental health service, working in partnership with Glasgow City Health & Social Care Partnership and the local authorities in our health board area. The team is multi-disciplinary, drawing together expertise in psychotherapy, occupational therapy, social work, nursing, family therapy, speech and language therapy, and psychology. Our team helps parents and care givers build positive relationships with their infants, to prevent and reduce the negative impact mental health and relationship challenges can have on them and their family. We also work with colleagues providing health care and support, to develop clear care plans and networks of support for families.

“This can mean helping an adult work through their suicidality and the impact it’s having on their baby, without adding to their distress – to do this with compassion and without blaming.” (Kasia, team member)

6.1 Our challenge

People can find it extremely hard to ask for help when they or their partner experience suicidality. Feelings of shame and fear are common. People worry about having to revisit traumatic events or that their child may be removed from their care. Evidence and people’s experience tell us that infants have their own and very specific needs. Traditionally, family mental health services have been set up to work with adults as the primary ‘patient’ in a family. This can make it harder to spot and meet the fast changing developmental and relational needs of very young children. When we stop and pay attention to a baby’s rich communication, we can learn a huge amount about the support they and the adults in their family need. They can play a big and active part in the whole family’s recovery. Our challenge has been to develop a service that places the infant at the centre of our work with the family, in ways the parents and carers can connect with.

6.2 Our response

We developed a new infant focused mental health service, drawing on evidence, experts, experiences of families who have used family mental health services, and funding support from Scottish Government. Our goal has been to tailor our offer to the child and family and meet people on their terms. We also wanted to offer families and their support networks the information, support, and tools that could empower them to value and respond to their infant’s experience and communication with them.

Many of the families we support experience the combined impacts of trauma, poverty, insecure housing, and unequal access to services. In response to this, we pulled together a multi-disciplinary team that can support people on the underlying drivers of distress and crisis as well as the impact it’s having on the family. Our service has four strands, which we draw on to meet each family’s needs:

1. Support network consultations – offering specialist support and developing care plans and networks of support with professionals supporting the family.

2. Outreach work – working alongside our partners in the third and community sectors, helping them shape the support they offer families.

3. Direct work with the family – working alongside a trusted professional, our multi-disciplinary team provides specialist support and evidence-based interventions for parents and carers to build positive relationships with their babies.

4. Education and capacity building – building understanding of infant mental health and the work we do, across key services and professional groups.

6.3 Learning from practice

Starting well: Listening to people’s experience of infant mental health services helped us understand the importance of addressing families’ fear of stigma and judgement. In collaboration with families, we chose a name (Wee Minds Matter) that sent a positive message about accessing our support. We invest time in building good relationships with and working alongside community-based support providers because we know that families are much more likely to seek and stay in contact with our support, when referred by someone they already know and trust.

Following through: We have thought a lot about how we administer appointments and communications. It is important that our first point of contact feels welcoming and human. We often ask the person who referred the family to help plan and confirm logistics for sessions. Taking a personal and therapeutic approach to each step and putting people in control of where and when we meet, is key to building trust in us.

Listening and Responding: When things go well, we let families know and emphasise the progress being made. We also support people to understand the different ways in which things can be challenging and increase their insight into how relationships from their own childhood can get in the way of their relationship with their new baby. After 3-5 introductory sessions, we review what we have done together using written or visual reports. This helps families to feel heard, seen and validated. We agree with families what will go in the report, taking a collaborative approach to this. For some families, we arrange for reports to be shared and read through by someone they know and trust.

“How do we keep going? Team supervision and reflective practice are crucial…to step back, ask questions together, and process the powerful feelings raised when working with vulnerable infants.” (Kasia, team member)

6.4 Impact

“Staff who visited us multiple times listened to everything I had to say, reassured me and helped me make sense of the things I was feeling as well as deciding the best plan going forward for me.” (service user)

Wee Minds Matter has been offering support to babies and their families since January 2022. Feedback from families working with the service describes increases in their understanding of their babies' emotional needs and communications, leading to improved relationships.

Find out more using their service leaflet and contact the Wee Minds Matter team at tier4admin@gcc.scot.nhs.uk