Hi Kerry....
I'm just a person from a rural area who used to be a peds doc and put a lot of focus on this.
I cannot state enough for the babies - Infant Mental Health. I wish I could put an Infant Mental Health therapist in every early on service in the entire United States. Many of these mothers have dissociation and they are going to need something that is pretty intensive like CPP or something to help them relate to the infant in a sensitive manner .... It's all really hard because it's all resource intensive (and prevention is best).
For the Babies -ABC Mary Dozier ( http://www.abcintervention.org/mary-dozier/
If you can find someone who could do it - I think that NMT assessment of Dr. Bruce Perry, MD _ If you can find someone who can do the NMT assessment on the kids so that we can know what the kids actually need to catch up, that would be great. My only problem in the rural area that I worked in was that we didn't have all the therapists needed who could provide the intense services that alot of these kids need.
For the mothers - If you could find someone who really gets Trauma and Dissociation........... (even though it isn’t a DSM diagnosis - The adult manifestations of that complex those people in Boston call Developmental Trauma).
What is available at Community Mental Health is usually psyche drugs and talk therapy and for complexly traumatized patients, that just does not work really well especially since a lot of these parents likely have significant developmental effects too.... Not even "TF-CBT. " I think something that would be useful, if you can get it is NMT for adults too - Though finding the services that the mom's need is probably gonna be even more difficult than finding what you need for the kids.
What I would not do, is think that general pediatricians know about child development. I was at Bessel van der Kolk's conference a few years back and I asked Ed Tronick a question (He is the still face researcher). The first thing he said to me was that "You pediatricians know nothing about child development." He is beyond correct. I have spent the last year reading everything I could find on child development and we really don't know anything about child development as it relates to trauma. There are a few peds on ACEsConnection who have been in Dr Tronick's Infant Mental Health Program and they do know about child development but I was taught nothing in Medical School, Peds Residency or any CME since then.
Good Luck......