Warwick Infant and Family Wellbeing Unit
Welcome to Warwick Infant and Family Wellbeing Unit (WIFWU)
Adopting a life course approach to public health from pre-conception to early years and adolescence, with interventions at critical life stages, can promote protective factors to improve long-term health outcomes and decrease health inequalities across generations.
We can only achieve this if we get it right from the start. There is government recognition through the Giving Every Child the Best Start for life Policy (2025) that this should be our aspiration.
Babies are born ready to socialise and their relationships matter. The experiences they have with their significant caregivers influence their brain architecture, attachment status and emotional regulation. Babies’ interpersonal relationships influence how they develop, and the quality of their relationships is important. If babies receive consistent sensitive responsive care, they form a secure attachment with their caregiver and are set on a positive trajectory across the life course.
However, relationships are affected by relationships that have gone before and some parents carry unresolved childhood trauma that can affect how they interpret their baby’s needs and cues. Each year 20% of babies’ mothers will be affected by perinatal mental illness. Early recognition and holistic support is crucial for the well-being of the whole family.
Professionals who work across multi-disciplinary fields with babies, infants and their families have a major role to play if they are to be effective in meeting this need. These professionals must be equipped to understand the fundamentals of perinatal and infant mental health and assess the quality of relationships early in a baby's life if they are to offer bespoke support to families that will improves long-term health and wellbeing outcomes for this family and their families who follow.
WIFWU's educational goal is to support you to develop your knowledge, skills and abilities to enable you to deliver evidence based care to the families you work with.
All Best Wishes
Dawn Cannon
Director of Warwick Infant and Family Wellbeing unit
To meet the team at Warwick Infant and Family Wellbeing Unit please follow the link:
Inter-Professional Education Programmes
Our inter-professional Infant Mental Health Online Course is relevant to all practitioners who work with babies, infants, children and their families in the UK and internationally.
Infant Mental Health Online (IMHOL)
IMHOL is an inter-professional educational provision that promotes the "
perinatal and mental health frame of mind".
- content is mapped to the UK Infant Mental Health Competency Framework (2019).
- 50 hours CPD accreditation from Warwick Medical School is awarded on successful completion.
(Please click on the link for more information)
Our Parent Infant Interaction Observation Scale allows practitioners to assess the quality of the parent-infant (P-I) relationship and offer bespoke dyadic support through reflective video informed feedback.
Parent Infant Interaction Observation Scale (PIIOS)
The PIIOS is a validated tool that assesses the quality of the P-I relationship at a critical time for the baby's neurological development and when attachment status is being established. The practitioner is enabled to identify dyads that need additional support and formulate a collaborative dyadic care plan that empowers parents and carers.
- Research has shown that PIIOS can predict emotional behavioural disorders in 2 year olds (Sharp, H. 2024).
- Reflective video informed feedback(RVIF) is integral to the PIIOS process and RVIF may enable positive change in the relationship for some dyads without additional therapeutic intervention.
(please click on the link for more information)
Quality Assurance
All our training provision has been mapped against the UK Infant Mental Health Competency Framework to enable practitioners to recognise how our learning outcomes support them to work towards gaining the knowledge and skills included in the framework.
This will support practitioners to generate their IMH Portfolio for access to the new specialist UK Infant Mental Health Recognition Register.
Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust are using the Parent Infant Interaction Observation Scale and have developed an information leaflet for parents. This can be viewed here: https://www.tewv.nhs.uk/about-your-care/treatments-therapies/piios/Link opens in a new window
Current Research
Information on Maternal and Fetal General Health and Wellbeing, and the Need for Effective Communication in Antenatal and Postnatal Care
This mixed-methods study aims to understand what information pregnant women and new mothers need to support their own and their baby's health and wellbeing, and how this information can be best shared with them.
Visit our Research pages to explore previous studies that share information and insights to support clinical practice related to infant and family wellbeing.