The Parent-Infant Foundation was founded as Parent Infant Partnership UK in 2012 to create a network of parent-infant teams across the UK (PIPs) with the vision of giving every baby the best start in life.
The importance of supporting early relationships was well understood by the small group of committed individuals who could see the benefit of expert parent-infant support for those experiencing difficulties in early relationships.
Before PIP UK’s formation in 2012, two sister charities were independently providing specialised parent-infant relationship services. The first of these was OXPIP, established in Oxford in 1998, followed by NorPIP established in Northampton in 2011. PIP UK was established as a national body to support wider replication of these services, with Andrea Leadsom MP as its Founding Patron.
From 2013, the charity worked alongside local authorities, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and third sector partners in funding and supporting the clinical work of seven parent-infant partnership teams across the country: Liverpool (LivPIP), with services commencing in January 2014; Enfield (EPIP), which launched in September 2014; Brighton (BrightPIP), which launched as a small pilot in May 2015; Croydon (Croydon Best Start PIP), which launched in May 2016, Newcastle (NewPIP), which launched in January 2017; Dorset (DorPIP) established in June 2018, and Ballygown, NI (ABC PiP) in January 2019.
In October 2019, we changed our name from PIP UK to the Parent-Infant Foundation to mark a change in strategy for the organisation. We moved away from a co-funding model towards being an organisation which supports the development of parent-infant relationship services within existing funding structures, which we believe will enable the faster development of more new, sustainable services. We are now working with ALL existing parent-infant teams across the UK, irrespective of their past relationship with PIP UK, to support shared learning and quality improvement in the whole sector.
We are currently working with sites across all four nations to grow the Parent-Infant Network and we won a grant from the National Lottery Community Fund, starting in September 2019, to develop, embed and evaluate a service in Essex.