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.
There are lots of ways to get involved in the week and to promote this year's theme "Including Infants".
Use the hashtags #IMHAW21 and #IncludingInfants on social media to join the conversation.
Download the IMHAW branding to support your social media and other activities
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.
Throughout the week we will be asking professionals in mental health pledge to include infants when you talk about Children and Young People’s Mental Health.
Take the #IncludingInfants Pledge now
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!