Good Start to Family Life
Behind the Good Start to Family Life Project
For some women, pregnancy brings more than joy and excitement. It can also be a particularly vulnerable time for families with mental health and psychosocial problems, and the mother’s mental state can have significant consequences for the unborn child and its first few years of life.
The Good Start to Family Life project is a collaboration between Amager and Hvidovre Hospital, The Mary Foundation, the Danish Center for Mindfulness at Aarhus University, Dialogue against Violence and Østifterne.
The project advances and strengthens the work already being carried out at the Family Clinic in Amager and Hvidovre Hospital. The upskilling of social workers and health professionals at the Family Clinic will equip them with even more tools to recognise, support and advise expectant families who need extra care.
The families will also be offered new services. The partners behind the project aim to develop group sessions that will enhance the families’ understanding of their own challenges with respect to stress, anxiety, addiction, etc., and increase their insight into how the mother’s condition can impact the child and parenthood. The parents-to-be will also be offered mindfulness training as a tool to stabilise and strengthen their mental health.
The Good Start to Family Life project will run until the summer of 2024, at which point the aim is to have established a tried and tested model to be implemented at the Family Clinic. The programme will offer at-risk pregnant women and their partners knowledge and practical tools that will make them aware of their own challenges, resources and actionable options, and will support them in breaking bad habits and coping with life as new parents. The model and methods developed must be transferable to the support offered to at-risk pregnant women in other regions.
Domestic violence
29,000 women are subjected to violence at the hands of their partners every year. 33,000 children grow up with domestic violence. Having close relatives who are affected by violence is a big taboo and often regarded as shameful. The Mary Foundation wants to give the silent victims of violence a voice and to help them build a life free of violence.