A special team is helping Dundee families affected by drug abuse and other problems, researchers have found.
Dundee University experts were asked to look at the work of New Beginnings, which combines social workers and specialist health workers.
The aim of the service is to help babies yet to be born or under the age of one whose lives could be blighted by parental substance misuse, mental health issues or learning disabilities.
New Beginnings work with the families to try find the best way of caring for the children. That can mean helping parents to look after them, or it can mean the babies having to be taken away.
Services include substance misuse treatment, teaching relapse prevention skills, support from a health visitor, regular clinic visits for health monitoring and practical support with housing and benefits.
The university researchers spoke to several mothers who had been referred to the team. Some were former heroin users now on a methadone programme or who had alcohol problems.
In several cases their baby, or older children, had been removed from their care. Some mothers were able to look after the children again once they had gone through rehabilitation.
A university report said: “One of the great strengths of the team and the multi-agency dynamic is being able to put services and support around the mother during pregnancy and the first year of the child’s life.”
The study found examples of “incredibly complex packages of intervention” tailored to the needs of individuals.
This might include aiding a mother with a learning disability by using dolls, books and other tools to teach her how to hold, change and feed her baby.
Women with drug problems who had not yet given birth were given support and advice about treatment options, while social workers completed reports for child protection conferences and encouraged parents to take part in meetings to discuss the future plans for their baby.
One of the mothers was asked what she was aiming to achieve with help from New Beginnings.
She said: “Just to be a normal person and be able to get up and do things with my daughter and get up in the middle of the night and feed her and change her and not be feeling crap because the heroin has wore off.
“I have achieved my goals and I am still achieving them.”
The university report said families were often suspicious and hostile towards social workers, but they seemed more comfortable with the New Beginnings staff, who had to balance the need to create a friendly atmosphere against the need to prioritise the welfare and safety of the children.
Dundee Community Health Partnership said: “The New Beginnings evaluation notes that there were significant positive features of the service delivered,including enhanced information sharing for the protection of children and improvement of outcomes for adults which was attributed largely to the physical co-location of relevant staff.
“The creative, holistic, wrap-around support and individualised packages of care were highlighted as a real benefit of the service, promoting the engagement of women in much needed services.”