PURPOSE:
This presentation explores an innovative community midwifery role within an infant mental health team, demonstrating how midwives can extend their practice beyond current obstetric boundaries to support families throughout the perinatal continuum and early childhood.

DISCUSSION:
Ireland's current maternity care system exemplifies global challenges: hospital-based, obstetric-led care with restricted midwifery autonomy, fragmented services, and minimal postnatal support. Women experience discontinuity of care and isolation especially after hospital discharge. The International Confederation of Midwives' scope sees midwives providing care and promoting well-being well beyond this restricted view. Working within an area-based childhood programme in a socially disadvantaged community, the midwife is a member of an infant metal health team. Infant mental health (IMH) encompasses a child's capacity to experience and regulate emotions, form secure relationships, and explore their environment—foundations for healthy social-emotional development. The multidisciplinary field of IMH recognises that interventions often begin too late and end too soon. The midwife can offer an important addition to the team by providing antenatal education, building a trusting relationship and continuing to work with the families after birth. Integrating an IMH perspective into holistic midwifery practice can enrich the midwife’s role and promises long-lasting impact for families. The approach emphasises collaboration with primary healthcare, maternity hospitals, social services, and community supports.

EVIDENCE WHERE RELEVANT:
Substantial research demonstrates links between prenatal experiences and childhood outcomes. Community-based, relationship-centered care models show improved maternal satisfaction, reduced interventions, and better psychosocial outcomes compared to fragmented care systems.

KEY MESSAGE:
This sustainable community-building model addresses modern isolation and disconnection. While in Ireland it is currently requiring departure from clinical practice, ideally this approach would integrate both community and clinical midwifery roles. Wider adoption of this model could transform perinatal care, supporting families holistically from pregnancy through early childhood. Poster session 1 (Group A)