Integrating Perinatal and Infant Care

This chapter draws attention to the importance of creating a nurturing start to a child’s life and the role that families, neighbourhoods and society as a whole play in creating a “nest”. Often the care that is provided is focused solely on the physical health (medical) domain with neglect of the psychological, material and social needs. We have sought, therefore, to stress the importance of focusing on the whole family as partners in the care of mothers and their infants. We have also drawn attention to the benefits of an integrated multi-disciplinary and multi-agency approach to perinatal and infant health and wellbeing.