Ready to Relate
Description
About Ready to Relate
Babies are born sociable, interested and seek companionship.
This Ready to Relate resource will help you to understand, interact, communicate and build your relationship with your baby. Ready to Relate aims to help you understand your amazing baby. Knowing more about your baby can help you build a satisfying and enjoyable relationship together.
Overview
The Ready to Relate cards are a visual, interactive tool to help practitioners assess, discuss and share healthcare information with families and to make NICE recommended interventions accessible. The cards aim to improve and enhance the parent‐infant relationship and promote infant attachment and optimal infant development.
Description
The Ready to Relate cards are a highly visual tool designed to facilitate understanding of the parent-infant relationship for practitioners and parents. They aim to enhance behaviours which may contribute to a secure attachment between caregiver and child and support infant mental health and brain development.
The pictorial aspect of the cards enables the cards to be accessible across cultures; the resource is also a valuable tool when working with interpreters. The Ready to Relate cards are an interactive tool and can be used to make interventions to help parents develop the skills and knowledge to enrich their parent-infant relationship.
Our Ready to Relate cards were written about in ‘Community Practitioner’ copies of which are available here and here.
Who are the cards suitable for and how do they work?
Find out who the cards are suitable for and how they work to improve the parent‐infant relationship and promote infant attachment and optimal infant development.
Accolades
Innovation Award 2015, North London Perinatal Mental Health Consortium.
Institute of Health Visiting Award 2018 – second place.
Ready to relate cards pilot study
During a pilot study of health visitors and nursery nurses, of 150 participants, 95 per cent of respondents were overwhelmingly positive about the cards.
Respondents credited the cards with: encouraging positive parenting and interaction between the parent and infant; learning to understand the importance of infant cues to respond appropriately to babies; and positively influencing aspects of neurodevelopment. For further details read the full evaluation report…
Find out more about what parents say in our preliminary evaluation of the Ready to Relate Cards
To find out more about the Ready to Relate Cards or order a set of your own, please contact Josephine.Domanski@bdct.nhs.uk.
Supporting information for use with cards
Find out about the many ways these cards can be used, including how to discuss the pictures with parents and how to enjoy sharing the importance of understanding and responding to baby.
Advocates
Hear what parents and professionals have to say about the cards and how it is having a positive impact on parents and infants. Take a look at the video testimonials from parents that have benefitted.
Lisa’s blog – born ready to relate
Dr Lisa Milne, Clinical Lead of Specialist Mother and Baby Mental Health Service shares her own experiences and why she knows babies are indeed amazing.
Free Ready to Relate Training
Did you know that babies are born ready to relate? These sociable infants want companionship and benefit from it. If you work with babies or families in pregnancy, join our free ready to relate training and find out more. Enroll on Ready to Relate Training