Hansard

Members might be aware that this is the first national infant mental health week. As a mental health nurse who has worked with mothers and their infants for the past 12 years, I warmly welcome the initiative and I hope that it will be the first of many such weeks that are aimed at raising awareness and knowledge of that very important issue.

Many members might wonder exactly what infant mental health is. The term refers to how well a child develops socially and emotionally from birth until the age of three. It is about a child developing the ability to form secure relationships with adults and their peers, being able to manage and express a full range of emotions and being able to explore their environment and learn from it. All of those are essential building blocks for developing well-rounded and healthy children and adults.

When a baby is born, it is pre-programmed to seek out and adapt to a relationship with a primary carer or parent. Babies look for that person and develop a strong bond with them. That is evolution’s answer to the prolonged period of helplessness that a human child experiences—it is a way of ensuring survival. The baby looks to a parent for love, food, care and comfort from distress. That attachment to the care giver helps to create the basis of a sense of self, inner confidence and a place in the world—a sense of security and certainty that their needs will be met and that they will be looked after.

Early brain development is the foundation of human adaptability and resilience. It provides a window of opportunity in which there can be a huge effect on a child’s chances of achievement, success in life and happiness. However, genes provide only a blueprint for an infant’s brain and an infant’s environment and experiences carry out the construction work.

Research on brain development in infants has rewritten the textbooks over recent years. There is strong evidence to suggest that the quality and content of a baby’s relationship with their parents may affect the development of the neurobiological structure of their brain and that that structure is harder to alter the longer that that development goes on for better or for worse. As the first few years of life see the most rapid brain growth, with 700 new neural connections being produced every second, it is not difficult to realise the importance of getting it right for every child from the start of life. In other words, for a baby’s brain, if they do not use it, they lose it and, if a part of the brain does not fire, it does not wire.

Through the national parenting strategy, the Government sets out an aspiration to make Scotland the best place in the world in which to grow up, providing parents and families the information and tools that they need to ensure good infant mental health and development. That is essential.

There are programmes such as the play, talk, read campaign, in which people are encouraged to interact with their babies and public health messages about the importance and benefits of such interactions are explained. We continue to provide families with books, materials, advice and support through the bookbug programme, which not only gives families books to read and share but, in its singing and rhyming sessions, promotes the benefits that such interactions have for developing speech and language and building confidence and social skills.

Midwives, antenatal education and health visitors also play a key role in promoting good mental health. The additional 500 health visitors by 2018 outlined in the manifesto will help to enhance that work. However, some parents have more complex needs and other services have been developed for them. That is why I particularly welcome the significant investment that the Scottish Government has made in the family nurse partnership. That is a strong, evidence-based programme that was developed in the USA over the past 30 years. Research shows that it has significantly improved the health and wellbeing of disadvantaged children.

The family nurse partnership is a preventative programme for vulnerable first-time mothers. It offers intensive and structured home visiting by specially trained nurses. The named individual nurse works with the family from early pregnancy until the child is aged two. The family nurse partnership has three aims: to improve pregnancy outcomes, to improve child health and to improve parents’ economic self-sufficiency. Following a pilot in NHS Lothian, it was rolled out to other health boards and has evaluated well in a Scottish context. It will continue to be rolled out to provide targeted support to all eligible teenage mums by the end of 2018. With further investment—initially of £4 million—the programme will also be extended to vulnerable first-time mothers aged 20 to 24, who currently do not qualify for the service, and to include more children who are at risk of going into care.

In addition to those initiatives, the Scottish Government promised in its election manifesto to work with mental health charities, stakeholders and service users to put in place a 10-year plan. That plan will transform mental health services, including those for children and young people. Additional funding for child and adolescent mental health services has already been delivered and the number of child psychologists has doubled, but infant mental health must be seen as an essential part of any future service development.

We need our babies to be healthy physically and mentally so that they can grow into healthy, resilient children and adults and be able to fulfil their potential and succeed in life.