Our Clinical Team
Our Clinical team is made of qualified professionals.
Groups Lead, IAIM Certified Infant Massage Instructor, Infant Loss Specialist
Lesley O’Brien
Sharing the same aims, visions and values as DorPIP and having the privilege of working in partnership with them provides me with both hope and excitement for a purposeful and united approach to enable and support all new parents within our local community. I have worked with many families who have shown me that the one thing that is eminent for many new parents from is that early parenthood does not always bring the perceived joys that many marketing and romanticised promotions can lead us to believe. Feeling alone in your thoughts, your anxieties and your love and yet emotional distance from your new-born can lead to feelings of failure and detachment. I have often seen how attending your first new baby group can help. Emotions, joys, anxieties, and tribulations can be shared honestly and safely, without judgment. With additional support if needed, the early journey of bonding and attachment can begin.
Claire Heaney
Groups Lead, IAIM Certified Infant Massage Instructor, Infant Loss Specialist
I am a group facilitator at Dorpip. I bring my professional knowledge as a Health Visitor of over 10 years and my own lived experience to the team. My focus is to emphasize the importance of early support for parents and infants, building that village and coping mechanisms, helping to strengthen parent-infant relationships through touch and play and promote lifelong emotional wellbeing for the whole family. When not working I can be found entertaining my 2 young and energetic boys or enjoying music at a festival or concert.
Summer started volunteering with DorPIP in 2021. Her passion for supporting parent's and their babies has grown which is why she has progressed from doing all things admin to becoming an IAIM instructor. Her current role mixes the administrative tasks of running the groups, whilst also being able to see the benefits that nurturing touch brings first hand. She is also studying to become a counsellor.
Clinical Administrator, IAIM Certified Infant Massage Instructor
Summer Cook
I am really passionate about supporting parents with young babies. Parenthood is often idealised but in reality it is usually much more complicated and challenging than we are led to believe. Everyone’s experience of parenthood is different, but we all need support and someone we can talk to about what is happening for us. In 2021 I started training to become a Parent Infant Therapist and I have worked with CAMHS, Homestart and in private practice. I previously worked in the NHS with people with eating disorders and I lived abroad for several years.
Parent Infant Psychotherapist
Rosie Smith
During my 25 plus years of working with children of all ages and their families, including children’s mental health services and children with disabilities, I have always been curious about parent-child relationship and how it is formed. I recently completed a Master’s in psychoanalytic observational approach which included infant observation from birth to the baby’s second birthday. It was the best learning about babies’ early communication and how their own sense of self starts to develop through their interactions with their primary carers.
I love creating nurturing and containing spaces in my infant massage groups and there is a real oxytocin boost created by being together! Babies learn a lot through their sensory experiences, touch being the most important one. How we hold babies is the foundation to their cognitive, emotional and physical development. It is where trust starts to develop and that includes trust in our capacities that we can be good enough for our children.
IAIM Certified Infant Massage Instructor
Ines Morrell, MA
The team at DorPIP is made up of our Trustees, Clinical Staff and Operational Staff and Volunteers.
Click a section below to find out more about them.
