Infant Mental Health Home Visiting (IMH-HV)
A voluntary HV model delivered by clinically-trained, master’s level professionals who provide weekly home visits to Medicaid-eligible birthing people and families with infants and young children.
IMH-HV has 3 unique characteristics that separate it from preventative HV models:
““Your work as an Infant Mental Health (IMH) clinician, providing services in the home to multi-risk families, can feel slow and also rewarding as families show you ‘small glimmers’ and great leaps of improvements in their interactions and insights.””
Infant-parent psychotherapy offers parents the opportunity to express and understand their feelings from past or present trauma, loss, abuse, neglect, or depression that threaten to interrupt the development of secure, stable, and enduring parent-child relationships
Licensed mental health professionals with an IMH-Endorsement®, specially prepared to provide both preventative and clinical interventions to help families address unresolved issues that may disrupt a baby’s healthy development
Eligible families may be very high risk (i.e. complex and co-occurring needs such as poverty, depression, domestic violence), have more than one child, and/or enroll anytime from pregnancy through a child’s 2nd birthday
IMH-HV also provides case management, developmental guidance, emotional support, life skills, and social support. IMH-HV’s goals are to help parents build secure attachment relationships with their babies; promote a child’s healthy growth and cognitive development; and reduce child abuse and neglect. IMH-HV is a unique service of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, provided statewide by 46 community mental health provider agencies.
IMH-HV has been evaluated by the University of Michigan Department of Psychiatry in partnership with these organizations and universities:
The Leadership Team and Michigan Collaborative for Infant Mental Health Research (MCIMHR) undertook a multi-trial, randomized controlled approach to assess the impact of IMH-HV on: Parent Health, Child Health, Positive Parenting, Linkages & Referrals, Reductions in Child Maltreatment, Family Economics & Self-Sufficiency, Child Development & School Readiness, Reductions in Juvenile Delinquency, Family Violence & Crime, and Therapist/Therapy/Reflective Supervision.
The following report (Fall 2018) summarizes the three studies that are being used to examine the efficacy and impact of IMH HV, in addition to explaining the activities of the Research Advisory Board members who are all engaged in analyzing the data. Download now.
Resources: Infant Mental Health Home Visiting
Weatherston, D. (2010). Infant Mental Health Home Visiting Strategies: From the Parents’ Points of View. Journal of ZERO TO THREE. 30(6), 52 - 57.
Lawler, J.M., Rosenblum, K.L., Muzik, M.M., Ludtke, M., Weatherston, D.J., & Tableman, B. (2017). A Collaborative Process for Evaluating Infant Mental Health Home Visiting in Michigan. Psychiatric Services in Advance, http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.201700047
Barron, C. & Paradis, N. (2010). Infant Mental Health Home Visitation: Setting and Maintaining Professional Boundaries. Journal of ZERO TO THREE, 30(6), 38-43. Weatherston, D.J., & Tableman, B. (2015).
IMH Home Visiting: Supporting Competencies Reducing Risks, 3rd Edition. Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health: Southgate, MI.
Barron, C. & Brown, S. (2017). Building Relational Possibilities: Theoretical Roots of Infant Mental Health Practice in the Case of Alycia. Journal of Social Work Practice, published online on 3/16/2017 at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02650533.2017.1291498?scroll=top&needAccess=true.