The importance of cooperation among child health professionals and agencies in an inner city infant mental health service

The clientele of our Infant Mental Health Service mainly consists of unwed teenage mothers and babies beset by medical, social, and psychological complications. Efforts to help these families usually extend beyond the caregiver-infant dyad and may include working with grandmothers, pediatricians, and high-risk neonatology nurses, as well as outside social agencies and foster homes. Thus, cooperation among various disciplines, departments, and agencies'is indispensible in infant mental health practice. Problems and successes in building and maintaining such cooperation, its impact on clinical practice, staff work, administrative functioning, and therapeutic strategies are discussed. Clinical examples illustrate the nature of the cooperation.