Francesca Rutherford

Parent Infant Psychotherapist (PIP) (UCKP Reg)

My passion and skills focus on helping babies and their parents.

Having a baby is a major experience in our lives and can elicit a range of feelings in expectant and new parents. Often the emotions that are felt at this time can feel extreme and overwhelming, even the good ones!

Sometimes, a parent/s can feel a range of worries or negative feelings and these can predominate or feel unsettling. This can be particularly bewildering when the baby is planned and much wanted.  Sometimes new parents have a sense of the route of their difficulties or understand that previous relationship problems may be reactivated at this time but are unsure of how to change this.

It is important to receive early support because for parents and their babies this is a special time for their developing relationship and for baby’s growth and development. Parents can benefit from a listening, caring and ‘neutral mind’ to help them explore where these feelings come from, and to address them. Parent Infant Psychotherapy can promote space in the minds of parents, to allow for more helpful patterns of relating and the formation of closer bonds with their unborn or new baby.

My work with expectant mothers and fathers or new parents provides time for reflecting on what it means for them to be a parent of this new baby in ways that can support a more helpful and rewarding relationship between parents and their baby. I offer a safe, non-judgemental and confidential space to help parents and their babies to process and understand their feelings and their emergent relationship. 

To find out more about me and Parent Infant Psychotherapy visit my website www.francescarutherford.co.uk

I will be offering PIP at The Open Door in Lewes from January 2020

About me

I trained at The School of Infant Mental Health and have worked with parents and their unborn or new babies (up to two years of age) in West Sussex, Brighton and Croydon. I have extensive experience of working with a range of families and their difficulties. Although broad themes of loss, depression, isolation, fertility problems, abandonment, health problems, etc can highlight increased sensitivity to relationship difficulties at this vulnerable time, I understand that each family and set of family relationships are unique and how parents and babies experience each other will be unique to them.

Prior to training as a Parent Infant Psychotherapist (PIP), I worked in early years as a nursery teacher, an early year’s advisory teacher and Portage manager in London and West Sussex. I was led into PIP work because of my experience and knowledge about the importance of early intervention and the link to well-being and good outcomes for families.

My aim is to help parents and their babies establish more secure attachments, to enjoy each other and to prevent any relationship difficulties becoming entrenched and damaging.