Social and emotional wellbeing for families starts early, and has long-term consequences for family health.
What has our research shown about social and emotional wellbeing in Bradford?
We’ve explored whether a questionnaire called the ‘Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale’ (MPAS) can be used to measure parent-infant bonding using the BiBBS birth cohort. We found that health visitors were successful in administering this scale to a sample that represents the wider population, but that it had limitations. Our work showed that further work needs to be done to know if this scale is measuring what it is supposed to.
Members of our research team have since developed the Me and My Baby (MaMB) measurement tool (University of York), and we’ll be looking to explore if this can be used in Bradford soon.
What evaluations of social and emotional health interventions are underway?
Baby Steps
We are testing whether Baby Steps, an intervention that helps mums during pregnancy and after birth, is effective for improving how mums respond to their babies, and for improving mums’ mental health. To do this, we’ll use the BiBBS cohort to make comparisons between mums who attended Baby Steps, and those who did not attend Baby Steps.
Incredible Years
We are also testing whether Incredible Years Toddler, an intervention parents of toddlers aged 1 – 3 years, helps child development by using the BiBBS cohort (this is known as an ‘Effectiveness Evaluation’).
We are also going to run a test (‘pilot’) study to look at how we can enroll mums into Incredible Years using a random selection process. Testing this selection process helps us understand if mums can be randomised for interventions using the BiBBS cohort to allow for further evaluation (a ‘Trial Within a Cohort Study’). Randomisation is a primary part of testing whether an intervention works in the least biased way possible.
Theme summary written by Kate Mooney
What services support the parent-infant relationship in Bradford?
There are many different services that run in Bradford to help parent-infant relationships. Below is a schematic of some of these services related to infant mental health, and how they fit together:
Schematic created by Sarah Masefield and Alison Ellwood
Click on an icon below to find out more about our research on early interventions for family social and emotional wellbeing.
the Better Start Bradford Innovation Hub 
You must be logged in to post a comment.