Publications

The idea for Baby Love: Supporting Infant Security was born in Israel, at the first meeting of the Israeli chapter of the World Association for Infant Mental Health. I was asked to develop an intervention that public health nurses could offer the mothers and babies they had in their well-baby clinics, known in Israel by the wonderfully charming and appropriate name of Tipat Chalav – a drop of milk. It was a brilliant offer – to develop an intervention that could be delivered by professionals already in place with the populations of mothers and babies they were servicing.

From that time, many people in Toronto, Israel, and north Ontario have had a hand in the design, implementation and evaluation of Baby Love. Two important principles remain at its core. First, it retains its focus on helping caregivers offer sensitive, mindful responses that are associated with the development of secure attachment in their babies. We scoured the literature to understand parental and environmental characteristics that might improve a baby’s chances of understanding the world as a safe and rewarding home and herself or himself as a valued individual understood and welcomed in that home. We integrated, as much as possible, findings from all schools of intervention that seemed promising and had some empirical support.

Second, Baby Love is adaptable. Baby Love changes every time we run it. It changes to fit the communities, to fit the cultures, to fit the leaders and mostly to fit the mothers, fathers, grandmothers etc. and their babies. This is the context within which it is delivered. We ask each time, “How does attachment theory fit within the understanding, traditions and practices of this group of individuals? How can we offer the information about attachment in a way that will engage them? What has to be adapted, edited, added … ?” We find the answers to those questions by asking the local leaders whom we train to run the groups and then the parents who participate in the groups. Often that process is a slow unfolding, growing over the course of running several series of group meetings. Sometimes it comes as a sudden revelation. Sometimes a discovery in one place has influence in another. We expect and welcome further changes as Supporting Security grows and matures.

We have made some changes in order to extend our reach, to help more parents and caregivers. We changed the name; initially called Supporting Security (you may still find some references to the intervention in its original name) we switched to Baby Love; Supporting Infant Security based on feedback from many sources. Notable in the range of changes has been a recent one to develop individual and brief versions of Baby Love. Hopefully these versions will help caregivers and babies for whom the group setting is not feasible or when 12 sessions seems too much. We also developed a strategy to spread the knowledge embedded within Baby Love across communities, thus posters, video clips, etc.

We encourage those who read the manual, undertake training and practice Supporting Security to ask the same questions and to adhere to the same principles. Mostly we advise learning how to watch the babies – they tell us which way is right for them.

Many individuals deserve acknowledgement for their contributions to Baby Love. First, for their contributions to earlier versions of the manual and to working with our first groups in Toronto: Joanne Cummings, Susan Mendolia, Faye Mishna, Ameeta Sagar and many others. For working with our first groups in the north: Flora Waswa and Selena Dockery. For groups in Israel: Ravit Nissan, Miri Keren and Sam Tyano. For help with our more recent groups in northern Ontario and in Toronto: Donna Namaypoke, Louise Mandamin, Patrick Lehnoff, Sheryl Chamberlain, Joe Barnes, Melanie Clarke and too many others to name. For their support, the communities of Shoal Lake 39 and 40, White Fish Bay, Grassy Narrows, White Dog, Wash Bay, Moose Factory, Fort Albany and Kashechewan. For the support of the Massey Centre for Women: Ekua Asabea Blair. For helping us with all the aspects of funding, reporting and support Claudia Shauer from Save the Children Canada and Tracey Clarke of Health Canada, First Nations and Inuit Branch. For its intellectual support and tolerance of my many peregrinations my own Department of Psychiatry at the Hospital for Sick Children.

For her support and guidance through the channels of the communications industry and for her partnership in developing the posters, videos and website, my daughter Arielle Holden and Commix Communications Inc. A special thanks to Commix for their very generous pro bono work in developing those products.

For ongoing support in operationalization, research, project coordination, and moral support Angela Prencipe and Carmen Chivoiu, without whom this would not have happened.

SUPPORTING SECURITY

Baby Love

When a Baby Cries, You Pick Her Up

Baby Love Testimonial