Currently, governmental systems and structures do not prioritise the development and emotional needs of children under three and they are overlooked in policy and service provision although it has long been known that this period of development is crucial for laying the foundations for lifelong mental and physical health. The well-being of the youngest members of society and those caring for them will shape the future. Policy makers need to take heed.

Care for babies is not just about ‘feeding and watering’ and ‘topping and tailing’ and caring for their tiny bodies and brains, but about nurturing their human spirit too.

Children need to see kind faces and smiles, they need to be welcomed by ‘grown-ups’ who understand what it’s like to be small and frightened in an unfamiliar world, and then perhaps society will become a nicer and kinder place.

The theme of bonding during pregnancy was highlighted in Infant Mental Health Week June 2023. Out latest blog promotes the potential positive benefits of making maternity grants available in late pregnancy.

…a coordinated strategy to help our youngest children overcome Covid’s impact is needed now.

Despite the considerable increase in knowledge about early brain development and being better informed about what makes for a ‘good childhood’, with the prevention of harm and the promotion of emotional wellbeing, the keys to future physical and mental health, there continues to be a political ‘blind spot ’where the needs of babies and children are concerned

Virtual support and information can be found on many websites and in parental forums. But this cannot replace a quiet chat with a local parent, who may be able to share experiences that are helpful, or who may be able to explain where to go for more support.

How can we support parents so that their anxiety does not affect their young? We all like to be told we are doing a good job, whatever that job might be.

…we must make the needs of early years children a priority. Careful thought and sustained action are vital.

….. the challenges of providing full-time care in the home for loved ones, whether young or old, is: insufficiently recognised, insufficiently valued, and insufficiently resourced.

Lack of funding for public services is a major barrier, but the solution isn’t simply to increase funding on initiatives with short- term headline grabbing targets, especially as this often results in funds for programmes that have long term outcomes to be cut back. The UK is burdened with a national and local electoral cycle that drives short-termism and ‘sound-bite’ politics feed the demand for headlines for our 24-hour media. Political lobbying by ‘single interest groups’ can be unhelpful, taking funding from integrated strategies that over time will bring about sustainable improvement.

The role of fathers has changed significantly over the last hundred years. Historically, fathers were the breadwinners of the family, usually with little time or input in caring for their young children. My own father worked long hours to earn the money to feed and clothe the family. He was not involved, nor was he expected to be, with looking after his young children.

Being a parent is an extension of being oneself, and verbing the concept burdens it with implication. With many new parents, particularly mothers, describing a loss of a sense of self following the birth of their baby, it might be time for us to rethink our approach to the way we support those in the throws of the transition to parenthood.

Having babies is going out of fashion: it's official. How seriously should we take this claim? Is it just a piece of American media nonsense, or – according to the cliché – ‘when America sneezes, the UK catches a cold?’

The last few months of a baby’s time in the womb are the critical ones for the number of connections which form between the brain cells or neurones in the brain. I am suggesting that it should become the norm (by choice rather than mandatory) for our mothers-to-be to reduce their full-time hours to around 20 hours per week at 6 months pregnant. The mothers’ gradual slowing down at work, through a drop in hours, would be recompensed by the Government as a “brain-building grant”. From the point of view of trying to reduce peri-natal depression, improving the emotional wellbeing of our future children and adults, as well as reducing future costs to the State, this makes sense.

Given a group name would suggest that it defines children by that name. Are we in danger of linking the child to the current situation and consequently forgetting that, whether babies are born in the midst of war or at the beginning of a century or in the midst of a pandemic, their needs are the same if they are to have the best start in life?

With their rapidly developing and infinitely programmable brains, very young infants quickly and efficiently absorb what is going on around them. It is often said that children will ‘learn what they live’:

Fear not if your children don’t listen to you; but be concerned they are always watching you…

As I look back on my younger self, I am all too aware how wrong I was to think that teaching teenagers was what really mattered. Indeed, we are far more likely to have healthy, happy and well-adjusted adults if we take real care to invest in the all-important first years of our children’s lives.

There is now a huge raft of scientific evidence on early brain development and many government reports, too numerous to mention here, that support John Carnochan’s view about the importance of early childhood and why children need to be properly nurtured and cared for to successfully reduce violence.

Society must ask why so many children and young people have poor mental health, find it difficult to make lasting relationships and suffer low self-esteem; why are suicide rates rising among the young; why is bullying and general insensitivity to other children so common?