ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a pilot intervention aimed at assisting adolescent mothers to be more emotionally available and respond more sensitively to their newborns, Susan Nicolson, who will report separately on the background, method and results. Clinical experience had shown that fairly rapid change in infant–parent interaction is possible with an attachment intervention after birth but it seemed important to intervene antenatally if possible. The intervention was designed to be low cost, replicable and to be provided within the Young Women's Program, a dedicated multidisciplinary clinic, so that it was carried out in a realistic, community setting to overcome some of the barriers to care for new mothers. A case is therefore made for conducting a multi-centre randomised controlled trial as the next step to determine the impact of incorporating the intervention into maternity care for this vulnerable group. To reduce maternal intrusiveness, which is usually highly stable from the first day of life, is a very positive result.
