Foundation annual report shows positive impact for babies and families

The Parent-Infant Foundation reports on another successful year.  Our annual report (covering financial year April 2022 – March 2023) shows that more babies are being supported, thanks to an increase in specialised parent-infant relationship teams.

The report sets out our new strategy and aims, adopted in May 2023, and key achievements across the year. It demonstrates how the work of the Parent-Infant Foundation is supporting professionals and specialised parent-infant relationship teams and influencing policy-makers.

At the end of March 2023 there were 45 specialised parent-infant relationship teams across the UK, with 14 more teams and services in development. This means hundreds more babies and families had access to specialist support and could get focused help with early relationships, mental health and wellbeing.

Other successes of the year include:

• Positive external evaluation of our services: An external evaluation of the Foundation’s services showed that the support from the Foundation was unique, highly valued, and of high quality.
• Recruitment of more clinical experts: The Foundation has increased its capacity for supporting the development of new teams and services with bespoke 1-1 support by recruiting additional clinical experts. There are now over a dozen experts on board to lend this support.
• Adding funding streams: We successfully bid for National Lottery Funding which has enabled us to employ a development lead to help establish new teams across the whole of Wales.
• Creation of new tools for professionals: We created a commissioning toolkit with partners at Newcastle University and NIHR Research, a service mapping tool and a self-audit tool which have been downloaded hundreds of times. 
• Delivering successful events: The Foundation successfully delivered a programme of national learning events which enabled us to reach nearly 1,500 professionals. 
• New supporters: Supporting ministerial visits to parent-infant teams this year has won the Foundation new advocates in government and in other parties.
• Wide reaching reports: As secretariat for the First 1001 days Movement, we produced reports on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on services, flagging that babies and families were still suffering as a result. This was quoted in parliamentary reports and debates and picked up by national media. We also ran several well-attended webinars.

Keith Reed, Chief Executive the Parent-Infant Foundation said:

“I am delighted to bring together this report, which highlights the progress made for babies and families in the last year through the work of the Parent-Infant Foundation and the teams and services it supports. Externally we are also seeing positive policy changes across Governments in the UK, with a growing understanding of the importance of investing in the earliest years of life. We will work hard for this to continue because it will drive the expansion of more new specialised services in the new financial year.

“We owe huge thanks to all our long-standing funders and partners who enable us to sustain the organisation, have ambition, successfully grow, and make an impact. Thanks also to the specialised parent-infant relationship teams and services doing the important work on the ground, and the Foundation staff team for their passion and commitment to all we do.

“As we go into a new year, the charity is in a healthy financial position, has a clear vision and strategy, and is united in championing babies and their families, who really need extra specialist support.  We still must recognise the gaps in services though, and that at least 1 in 10 babies are living in fear and distress. The Parent-Infant Foundation will continue to campaign for all these babies in need to have access to a specialised team to help give them the best possible start in life.”

The full Annual report is available here and you can find out more about our strategy and vision here.