I've raised £780 to give to BrightPIP's work with vulnerable babies and their parents.
Organised by Kerry and Suzie
Story
Brighton Parent Infant Psychological Therapy (BrightPIP) has a vision to change the future, one baby at a time. We want every baby in our community to grow up feeling safe, secure and loved. We work with parents-to-be and babies aged 0-2 and their parents providing parent infant therapy, video guidance, infant massage and antenatal mellow bumps groups. Our mission is to intervene at the earliest time with families to prevent maltreatment and support parents to have positive relationships with their children.
Every year, an estimated 495 babies born in Brighton, are at risk of having 'insecure attachment'. This means that sadly these babies do not feel safe with their parents. This can be due to, for example, psychological impact of a premature baby, perinatal depression or anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder following traumatic birth. Our families’ lives are often extra hard due to domestic abuse, poverty, poor quality parental relationships and unstable housing. Often parents have experienced high levels of childhood trauma in the form of abuse or neglect. They are not able to respond to their child’s needs as they have no experience of good parenting or were themselves in Care as children.
BrightPIP is a charity (Registered Charity Number 1177084) and depends on the support of donations to do this essential work. We urgently need to raise funds to carry on seeing vulnerable families.
Kerry:
'The reason I founded BrightPIP is because when I first became a parent (nearly 15 years ago) I realised how incredibly hard it is! I really struggled with feeling so anxious and unsure that it was hard to understand and be sensitive to my baby. I was lucky to get the support I needed. Then, as a Clinical Psychologist working with parents with more stress and far less support I thought 'how on earth do we expect new parents to cope!?'. Parenting is pretty much the most important and influential job we can ever do - and also the toughest job. We know through neuroscience that the foundation for a child's social and emotional well being is formed before birth and in the first few years of life. We have a child mental health epidemic in this country and some of these difficulties can be quickly and effectively prevented by working with parents and their babies offering the right support early on.'
BrightPIP Trustee, Suzie van der Westhuizen and Clinical Director, Dr Kerry Taylor will be running 10K on Sunday 14th April as part of the Brighton marathon weekend.
Suzie and Kerry are aiming to raise £780.00 which is the cost of running a 'Mellow Bumps' group for vulnerable mums-to-be across the city. This is a 6 week group for 2 hours each week that supports pregnant women with particular social and health vulnerabilities. This programme decreases stress levels and promotes attachment and bonding. It has had really good feedback from women who have attended so far. Participants of the last group said:
“Having a safe space to finally be able to share honestly about how I was feeling made such a huge difference.”
Just having people to talk about pregnancy with and the ups and downs and realizing that I wasn’t alone was the biggest positive”
“I would definitely recommend Mellow Bumps to others (in fact I already have)”
“I also loved the fact that there was a midwife and health visitor at the group so I could ask anything and would be pointed in the right direction.”
We would really like this course to carry on running. Please pledge your support for this vital work of BrightPIP by sponsoring our run!
