The Ububele Baby Mat intervention: facilitating meaning in a multi-cultural context

Abstract

This paper expands on the continuing understanding of the Ububele Baby Mat Project — a community-based parent–infant mental health intervention now offered at six primary healthcare clinics in Alexandra, Johannesburg. This paper describes the influence of cultural diversity and the complex layers of meaning-making involved in the Baby Mat intervention. Meaning-making is a collaborative process between the caregiver–infant dyad’s cultural beliefs and experiences, the Baby Mat couple’s relationship, knowledge and skills, and the additional minds of the multicultural supervision group. This paper aims to clarify these three layers of co-constructed meaning-making involved in the Baby Mat intervention. Three central themes are thus presented to discuss the impact of multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-lingual therapeutic dyads on the process of the Baby Mat intervention. These core themes are the verbal and non-verbal meanings of presenting problems brought by caregiver–infant dyads; the value and obstacles involved within a cross-cultural baby mat couple; and the significance of a reflective group supervision space. Case extracts are used to illustrate these processes of multiple minds at play during a Baby Mat session.