1. Clinical Services P.I.P. (Parent-Infant Programmes) utilize an innovative model for working with severely dysfunctional families with young babies as well as providing secondary consultation on infant mental health.
2. Research Programme including two large collaborative research studies.
   Major research funding has been attracted in the area of post-natal depression and its effect on the infant.

Introducing the Infant Clinic
The Infant Clinic provides a service to explore and help with the difficulties experienced by parent/s of an infant in distress (0-2 years). Treatment plans are individually tailored to include a range of approaches found to help early parenting difficulties and infant adjustment. These draw from educational, supportive, movement, psychodynamic and cognitive behavioural therapies. The service has a part-time team consisting of psychologists, a dance therapist, a nurse and access to paediatric and psychiatric consultation.

• To help parents deal with stress and difficulties they experience when raising their infant, and to develop together alternative ways of managing the problem and relieving the stress.
• To maximise the child's future development, through early assessment and intervention.
• To provide consultation to professionals about methods of working with and helping parents and infants.
• To provide a specialised assessment service to other agencies who maintain case management responsibilities.

Who can attend the Infant Clinic
Any parent or family with an infant who:

• Feels burdened by the demand of being a parent and unable to cope, feels depressed or has a psychiatric disorder;
• Is worried that their baby is not feeding well or growing as well as expected;
• Feels that their baby is too fussy or difficult to comfort;
• Has a baby who has sleeping problems, difficulties around separation or long and frequent temper tantrums;
• Finds their baby unusually quiet or uninterested in them;
• Has a baby with developmental problems which place special emotional burdens on the parents.

Target Population: A Spectrum of Difficulties

• Infant centred difficulties
  - Failure to thrive.
  - Persistent crying.
  - Severe sleeping and separation difficulties
• Psychiatrically ill mothers
• Moderately severe adjustment difficulties in mothers
• Specialized services in treating postnatal depression as well as associated parent-infant problems
• Family and couple difficulties
• Severe interactional difficulties in attachment and parental coping (including personality disorder, history of deprivation, abuse)

1. Feedback forms from agencies and consumers.
2. Research projects:
- Developing a risk screening tool for high risk families of infants. Investigator: Caroline De Paola.
- Early Intervention for Mother-Infant Difficulties Following Postnatal Depression. Investigators: Prof. J. Milgrom, Prof. Paul Martin, A/Prof. Judith Ungerer.
- The effect of parent sensitivity training on infants and parents. Investigator: Dr. Carol Newnham.
- Infant Development and Severe Mental Illness. Investigators: Prof. Jeannette Milgrom, A/Prof. Anne Buist.