Title: Facilitating carers' mind-mindedness through education and early intervention
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: What determines the people we become? How does children's early environment affect their development? In order to answer these questions, my group's research involves working with the same families over years or even decades to chart children's development. These longitudinal studies involve families from wide-ranging social backgrounds and start when the baby is around 6 months of age. Our findings show that parents' ability to 'tune in' to what their baby might be thinking or feeling (so-called 'mind-mindedness') is an important predictor of a range of positive child outcomes (secure attachment, language and play, children's understanding of other people's thoughts and feelings). Parents who are skilled at 'reading' their babies' minds also report lower levels of parenting stress. Specifically for families in poverty, parents' ability to tune in to their babies' thoughts and feelings protects the child against problem behaviours at school-starting age. Our research thus shows the widespread benefits of parents' willingness to see things from the child's perspective. Mind-mindedness focuses on very specific parenting behaviours and is relatively straightforward and quick to assess. The main research objective of this application is to develop and evaluate an intervention package that will inform parents in an accessible way about mind-mindedness. The intervention will consist of an animated film, short book and smartphone app that will help facilitate parents' mind-mindedness. The efficacy of this intervention package will be evaluated by exploring its impact on mother-baby interaction and child outcome in an at-risk sample (teenage mothers). The associated PhD studentships will explore (a) the relation between adoptive parents' mind-mindedness, success of the adoption placement and child outcome, and (b) mind-mindedness in childcare professionals and its relations with quality of caregiver-child interaction and child behaviour. The intervention package is crucial for ensuring that our academic research has real-world implications and applications. There is increasing Government recognition that early intervention is key to improving the outcome of vulnerable children. For example, Field's (2010) report summarised how to prevent poor children from becoming poor adults as follows: "The things that matter most are a healthy pregnancy; good maternal mental health; secure bonding with the child; love and responsiveness of parents along with clear boundaries, as well as opportunities for a child's cognitive, language and social and emotional development" (p. 5). However, concluding that these factors are crucial is easier than establishing what to do to increase the number of vulnerable children having positive parenting experiences. My research can help inform Government thinking on early intervention in a number of important ways because mind-mindedness predicts outcomes in the key factors identified in Field's report. The main impact-related objective of this Fellowship is to extend my existing work with MPs, local government and charities to ensure that the academic research on mind-mindedness is used to inform policies and programmes relating to children and families. Delivering professional training courses to midwives, health visitors and nursery nurses will be a key component in meeting this objective. The Fellowship research will be disseminated to academic audiences via a number of major research papers. A website and popular science book will disseminate the Fellowship activities to non-academic audiences.


Research activity codes: 3.1 PRIMARY PREVENTION INTERVENTIONS TO MODIFY BEHAVIOURS OR PROMOTE WELL-BEING
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH