History
Minding the Baby ™ Home Visiting (MTB-HV) was delivered to first-time young families in New Haven, Connecticut from 2002-2021. This community-based program grew out of collaboration among the Yale Child Study Center, Yale School of Nursing, and two federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) located in under-resourced neighborhoods. Registered Nurses (RNs) and master’s level mental health practitioners (typically Licensed Clinical Social Workers) paired to provide intensive, interdisciplinary in-home health and mental health care, parenting support, and anticipatory guidance to young, typically first-time parents and their infants.
The first MTB Introductory Training Institute was offered in 2009, when a collaborative effort also began with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the United Kingdom. This involved a replication of the MTB-HV clinical and research program across 3 UK sites, in Glasgow, Sheffield, and York.
After rigorous testing in the New Haven community and two federally funded randomized controlled trials (RCTs), MTB-HV was designated by Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness (HomVEE) review as an “evidence-based early childhood home visiting service delivery model” in 2014. The criteria for this designation were established by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). MTB-HV was one of fewer than 20 home visiting models nationwide with this designation at that time. Following this designation, a small-scale replication began in Miami, Florida in 2015 through the Young Parents Project at Florida State University.
The MTB National Office was established in 2016, with the aim of broadening the MTB-HV mission beyond direct service to include replication, training, and dissemination. MTB-HV implementation began in a single municipality in Denmark this same year, later expanded across several more municipalities nationwide. In 2017, MTB-HV expanded in the U.S. with the start of two new MTB-HV teams serving families in Fairfield County, Connecticut through a collaborative replication with two agencies in Norwalk and Stamford. A new Connecticut team began serving families in New Haven County through Yale New Haven Hospital beginning in early 2020, though these sites have since closed enrollment due to lack of continued funding.
Today, MTB National Office faculty and staff at Yale University support MTB-HV implementation in Denmark, while also disseminating the key principles of MTB’s reflective parenting approach through individual consultation and our new book: Enhancing Attachment and Reflective Parenting in Clinical Practice: A Minding the Baby Approach (Slade, with Sadler, Eaves, & Webb, Guilford Press, 2023). The MTB National Office will no longer be supporting new implementation efforts going forward.