Bury SEND HV Team, Bury Health Visiting Service with First Point Family Support
What is IBasis?
iBASIS (Intervention for the British Autism Study of Infant Siblings) uses videos of parents and carers playing with their babies. This helps parents/carers to better understand their babies and help to develop their interaction skills. The iBASIS practitioner records the adult and child playing together; then the adult and iBASIS practitioner watch the video back together and talk about what is going well and why. From watching their child and talking about them, the parents and carers develop more understanding of their baby and strategies that help their child.
Who runs the IBasis programme?
iBASIS is carried out by a Specialist iBASIS practitioner from the Bury Health Visiting Service, SEND Health Visiting Team in partnership with First Point Family Support.
What will happen in IBasis therapy?
Following referral, you will be contacted by an iBASIS practitioner, either from a SEND Health Visitor or First Point Family Support. We will then provide a screening contact to make sure that the therapy is suitable for you.
The iBASIS practitioner will usually see you at home for up to 10 sessions, often one session every 2 weeks. Alternatively, if you would prefer, sessions can also be arranged in clinic/or by video call via video link. Most sessions will follow this format:
- Review: Reviewing parent/carer goals from the previous session and talking about what you have noticed about your baby or how the baby has progressed since the previous meeting.
- Play video: the practitioner records a 6-minute video of you and your baby playing / interacting together.
- 15-minute break: The practitioner watches the video back and makes notes of what they notice about your baby’s interaction and what has gone well, to discuss with you.
- Feedback: You and the iBASIS practitioner look at different parts of the video and spend time thinking about what your baby is experiencing and when your baby is trying to connect with you. The iBASIS therapist will also draw your attention to times when the baby and parent/carer are sharing attention to one thing and enjoying an interaction together, as well as moments where this leads to back/forth interactions. The practitioner will ask questions to help you think about what worked well and why.
- Goal setting: The parent/carer decides what has worked well and how they will practice these strategies until the next session.
How can I be referred?
Your Health Visitor or Community Nursery Nurse can make the referral directly to the iBASIS team. If this has not been offered to you already, please contact your health visiting team.
What should I expect at the end of IBasis?
iBASIS aims to give you the opportunity to understand your child better as an individual because every child is different. The intervention uses video feedback to give you the opportunity to try strategies and work out how they affect your child by seeing the evidence of their response in the video.
At the end you will know the specific strategies that help your child best to interact more easily and effectively. The 10 sessions complete this package of intervention. Following iBASIS, if you feel that you need any further support with your child’s language and communication skills, you can discuss this with your Health Visitor or Community Nursery Nurse.
What should I do if I can't attend an IBasis appointment?
Please contact the iBASIS practitioner directly if you cannot attend. You will be offered up to 10 appointments, but we may not be able to re-arrange cancelled appointments.
Feedback from parents
“At the beginning, I had no faith I could do anything. I didn’t understand her or know how to help. As it has progressed & we’ve watched back the videos, I notice much more about her now. I’ve been using more words. She’s using more eye contact. I feel more laidback and can see her progressing.”
“I now understand my child much better. I understand my child’s cues.”
“At the beginning, I was only focusing on the fact that he couldn’t say words and wasn’t aware of other types of communication. Now I’m tuning in more and the more I pick up on the thing he does do and respond to it, it’s bringing out more in him.”
“I believe early intervention is crucial. It’s so needed. We’ve seen so much progress in our child over 5 months.”
“It’s been brilliant. I’d recommend it to anyone.”
Contact
iBASIS Practitioners
Bury SEND HV Team
Windsor House, Little 66, Pilsworth, Bury, BL9 8RN
Telephone Contact: 0161 206 6166
Other things to know about IBasis
iBASIS has a very strong research evidence base. A recent study in Australia (Whitehouse et al., 2021) followed 103 nine- to fourteen-month-olds in Melbourne and Perth who had presented in the community with neurodiversity/early signs of autism (such as avoidant eye contact and reduced use of gestures) found several outcomes. At the age of 3 years, whilst the infants who had received the intervention still had developmental difficulties, their social engagement had improved, they had significantly fewer sensory behaviours and fewer repetitive behaviours.
Improvement on this scale has never been shown before and the developmental results replicate a previous UK-based iBASIS study conducted by Professor Jonathan Green (Green et al., 2017).
Whitehouse, A; Green, J. et al. (2021) ‘Effect of pre-emptive Intervention on developmental Outcomes Among infants Showing Early Signs of Autism: A randomized clinical trial of outcomes to diagnosis.’ JAMA Pediatrics, 175 (11). Available at: doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.3298
Green, J., Pickles, A., Pasco, G., Bedford, R., Wan, M. W., Elsabbagh, M., Slonims, V., Gliga, T., Cheung, C., Charman, T., Johnson, M., & Team, T. BASIS. (2017) ‘Randomised trial of a parent-mediated intervention for infants at high risk for autism: longitudinal outcomes to age 3 years’. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 58 (12), pp1330-1340. Available at: doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12728
Date of Review: February 2025
Date of Next Review: February 2027
Ref No: PI_ICS_2017 (Bury)