Meaning of the name Au Milieu

Milieu is a French word that is defined as a social environment or setting in which something occurs or develops: the cultural climate, defining atmosphere, or physical location in which a person lives. One could say, ‘as the daughter of a therapist, Anna grew up in a therapeutic milieu’. 

By naming our organisation Au Milieu (in the midst), we wish to create the defining culture of a village, ‘in the midst’ of which, the baby and family can be held and nurtured by many skilled hands.

The name Au Milieu pulls away from a purely clinical approach and draws on all parts of the clinician and client in the work of infant-parent psychotherapy. In this invisible work within the spiritual realm of the unconscious, the searchlight of the infant-parent psychotherapist shines on painful issues which have been hidden for so long, while mother and baby are held securely within a safe and trusting relationship.

DR. Yvonne Osafo

Project Pioneer

Project pioneer, Dr Yvonne Osafo from South West London, is a psychoanalytic infant-parent psychotherapist (IPP), which encourages good early relationships between parents and their children to offer them the best possible start in life. Dr Osafo has received grant funding from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, which served as seed funding to pilot Au Milieu, as a Community Interest Company that provides infant-parent psychotherapy to low-income and high-risk families, predominantly from black, Asian and other ethnic groups. Dr Osafo is helped by a specialist team of psychologists, psychotherapists, paediatrician consultants and operational support, to bring Au-Milieu to birth as an organisation.

The project is informed by Dr Osafo’s doctorate research in psychoanalytic parent-infant psychotherapy and a Winston Churchill travel Fellowship to Czechia, Norway, Sweden and the USA in 2016, to explore best practice in infant parent psychotherapy. The purpose of the Churchill sponsorship was to ‘travel to learn and return to inspire’ the UK workforce through entrepreneurial projects.

Dr Osafo was consultant to the setting up of the Croydon Parent-Infant Partnership, where she was Clinical Lead from 2015 to November 2020.

Our Goals

Au Milieu has two overarching goals:

  • to train and equip professionals with the specialist skills required to work with the delicate infant-parent relationship.
  • to provide specialist therapeutic interventions for parents who are struggling to bond with their babies in the first two years of life.

Our Projects