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Together time

Therapeutic parent and baby group

  • Date and time

    Tuesdays from April between 12:30 and 2pm.

Together time is part of the under-fives pathway offer in Children Centres and is a therapeutic intervention for families with babies under the age of 1 (and usually no younger than about 4 months). Following our pilot last year we will be rolling a programme of 2x groups per year. 

The group is open to families from Camden Borough with babies aged 4 to 12 months. It runs over 6 weeks and consists of up to 8 families. Each session lasts 1.5 hours and parents/carers attend with their babies.   

Together time is a specialist therapeutic intervention run by our Whole Family Perinatal service. It is aimed at parents experiencing worries or difficulties in their relationship with their baby, for example: 

  • struggling more than would be expected to bond with their baby 
  • finding it hard to understand or accurately read their baby’s communications 
  • struggling to get the distance right in the relationship (intrusiveness or some distance/neglect)  
  • experiencing mild to moderate anxiety or low mood  

Where

Agar Children Centre
Wrotham Rd
London
NW1 9SU

Find directions

High risk families

The group would not be appropriate for families where there is high risk, or it would be unsafe for them to be exposed and explore their difficulties within a group setting.

What happens on the day

The approach uses the Watch, Wait and Wonder in a group setting with parent-infant dyads. The focus of the intervention is the parent-child relationship and the groups are mostly led by the babies themselves. The aim is to enhance parental sensitivity and responsiveness,  the child’s sense of self and self-efficacy, emotion regulation, and the child-parent attachment relationship. Babies and parents work through these developmental and relational struggles through play. Also central to the process is engaging the parent to be reflective about the child’s inner world of feelings, thoughts and desires, recognise the separate self of the infant and gain an understanding of their own emotional responses to the child. Watch, Wait and Wonder differs from other interventions which tend to focus primarily on the more verbal partner, the parent, in its focus on the child and the parent-child relationship.  

This group is run by

  • Alkisti Holmes
    Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist
  • Chrysoula Karamitsou
    Advanced Practitioner

How to join

If you would like to make a referral, or discuss the group further please email LACAMHSADMIN@Tavi-Port.nhs.uk or contact Alkisti Holmes, Sarah Peter or Chrysoula Karamitsou. The referral process for professionals is: 

  1. discussion of potential referral 
  2. referral made following our discussion – we can jointly complete the referral during our discussion. 
  3. referrals are screened and once accepted and a one off brief assessment session will be offered to families