One of the integral parts of The Learning Tree Early Childhood Centre is the development of understanding and capacity in relation to Infant Mental Health. We as a service aim to support parents to focus on the social and emotional well-being of their babies/toddlers. This program is about raising parent’s awareness of how important the parent is in building a strong and resilient foundation of wellbeing through the relationships we can offer our children. Unfortunately our busy lifestyles sometimes mean that we just don’t have enough time in the day to spend real quality time with our young children. Our focus is in facilitating the space to enable this to happen.

To further ensure the delivery of a quality service we also operate a key worker system. This is where each practitioner is allocated a small number of children, usually 4-5. This enables the child and the adult to develop a close and secure attachment within the service which is critical for early development. Organising in this way also means that one practitioner has primary responsibility for gathering in-depth knowledge of the child, based on observation. They are also responsible for completing the child’s records complete portfolio of their time spent with us. The key worker is the first point of contact for the parent and child within the child’s assigned room.