Parent support group to speak at key summit

From the archive, first published Monday 27th Jan 2003.

An Oxford charity helping mothers who are struggling to bond with their babies will play a key role at a summit on children's issues.

The Oxford Parent-Infant Project (OXPIP), based in the Healthy Living Centre in Oxford Road, Cowley, has been asked by the Conservative Party to address January 28's conference at the House of Commons.

OXPIP chairman Andrea Leadsom, who lives in Moulsford, near Wallingford, will address MPs, councillors, police, volunteers and leading charities who are concerned with children's health, child protection and children's mental health.

OXPIP has spent five years building up a team of seven dedicated clinicians to work with mothers who, either due to homelessness, exhaustion or depression are struggling to relate to their babies.

The team, funded by a grant from the Community Fund, offers mothers, and in some cases fathers, up to a year of free counselling.

OXPIP's work comes after research on the brain's development during the first two years of life showed how our initial experiences as babies directly determine how we behave in later life.

Clinical co-ordinator Joanna Tucker, who will also address the summit on the topic of child mental health, said: "Warm responses, eye contact, smiles and secure handling are needed for those neurological pathways determining the good or bad emotions we feel to 'wire together'.

"Without that stimulation the baby cannot feel happy or content. The triggers in the part of the brain which promotes emotional growth are lost.

"My belief is that if we can intervene early, we may be able to make a significant difference to not only a baby's life, but to their parents' and siblings' lives too."