Infant Mental Health Awareness Week
Infant Mental Health Awareness Week runs every June. It provides an opportunity for everyone working in the sector to raise awareness of the importance of babies' social and emotional development, and to share work they are doing.
Every year there is a wonderful range of national and local activity during the week. This year the week will take place from 7-13 June. We will update this webpage over the coming months with resources to use and plans for the week. Please tell us what you are planning so that we can build this into the calendar for the week.
The theme for Infant Mental Health Awareness Week 2021 is including infants in children and young people’s mental health.
The goal of this year’s IMHAW theme is to encourage everyone working in children and young people’s mental health policies, strategies and services to think about and include babies. Children and young people’s mental health should refer to the mental health of all children from 0-18 and beyond, but too often it is focussed on older children. There is a “baby blindspot”. We are encouraging everyone to think and talk about infant, children and young people’s mental health, and to consider how babies’ mental health needs can be met.
We will be using the hashtags #IMHAW21 and #IncludingInfants
Previous Infant Mental Health Awareness Weeks
IMHAW20
There was huge engagement in 2020's Infant Mental Health Awareness Week across the UK and around the world.
Face-to-face events could not take place because of the Coronavirus pandemic but IMHAW saw huge amounts of activity on facebook, instagram and twitter using the hashtags #IMHAW20 and #IMHAW2020. Analytics suggest that #IMHAW2020 was used in 7,400 twitter posts, reaching 14.2 million people!
During the week, the First 1001 Days Movement was re-launched with a new vision, mission and consensus statement. This was accompanied by an open letter to the Prime Minister about the importance of babies' emotional wellbeing and development.
We created a new infographic explaining what infant mental health is and why it matters, see here.
The Parent-Infant Foundation was very busy during the week!
- We created an Infant Mental Health Briefing document for Commissioners explaining infant mental health, the role of teams and the impact of Covid-19, see here.
- We pulled together a rich resource outlining Online Infant Mental training resources for professionals, see here.
- Sally Hogg contributed to various blogs including: ACAMH: “Where is the I in CAMHS?”, iHV: “IMH matters now more than ever”, NHS Confederation: “Where is the ‘I’ in Mental Health?”
- Karen Bateson contributed to the Mind Matters podcast, listen/watch here
Thank you to everyone who contributed and participated!