Speaker Update Joanna Hawthorne
Joanna Hawthorne is a research psychologist (Ph.D. 1982) and an Associate Member of the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge. She is also the Coordinator of the Brazelton Centre in Great Britain.
Update since 2006 Conference
Since July 2006, the Brazelton Centre has qualified another 100 health professionals in the Neonatal Behavioural Assessment Scale (NBAS). Through this work, they can support parents in the early weeks through an understanding of their infant's behaviour.
In March 2007, the Brazelton Centre held a Conference in Cambridge, 'Learning from the Baby: New ways of working with parents' where our guest speaker was Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, Emeritus Paediatrician, Harvard Medical School and his colleague, Dr. Joshua Sparrow, Child Psychiatrist. The theme was about supporting parents using a non-medical model, focusing on the individual needs of the parents and baby through the Touchpoints programme, developed by Dr. Brazelton, now in his 89th year!
In 2007, the NBAS was recommended as an important intervention in the newborn period, by the new initiative in Wales, Flying Start. Several groups of health professionals in Wales are now undergoing NBAS training. In March 2008, the NBAS was named as an important intervention in the newborn period by the new Child Health Promotion Programme, Department of Health, UK.
In April, 2008, the Brazelton Centre joined with One Plus One in a project to look at ways to support the couple relationship, and the parent-baby relationship. A new intervention prototype will be developed.
In October, 2008 the Brazelton Centre introduced their new NBAS training programme, which aims to provide a more detailed introduction to the assessment. National training days are posted on our website, and large groups can be trained in their location.
In April, 2008 in Cambridge, the Brazelton Centre is setting up a training site in the UK for the Newborn Behavioural Observations Systems Training (NBO). The NBO is based on the NBAS concepts, and serves as a relationship building tool between clinician and parent. It is an introduction to baby behaviour, but not a complete assessment of the individual baby.
Our continuing goal is to train every health visitor or those working with parents and newborn babies in the NBAS and NBO in order to increase knowledge of baby behaviour, but also to work in a collaborative way with parents.