Pregnant women, expectant fathers and partners will request support in different ways:
- After meeting a volunteer at a community outreach activity
- Through a professional involved in their care
- After finding out about it by word-of-mouth, social media, reading a leaflet etc.
Read more about coordinating pathways to support.
Balance promoting referrals with availability of volunteers
This is a delicate balancing act. Delays between finishing initial volunteer training and starting to volunteer can be demotivating. Similarly, it’s important to avoid too many referrals without having the volunteer capacity to respond.
Give a clear timeframe for responding to requests for one-to-one support. This will help to ensure confidence and credibility in the support being offered.
Keep track of the support process
For example, using a referral tracking sheet helps you to:
- Keep an overview of the progress of all your active referrals
- Ensure referrals are being responded to promptly within agreed timescales.
Further information and resources can be found here.
It is important to assess whether expectations are realistic.
For example:
- Has the informal role of the volunteer been understood?
- Has the pregnant woman agreed to the referral being made?
- Has the primary aim of early prevention been understood, rather than crisis support?
- Is a professional expecting the volunteer will carry out a role that should be done by a professional? (Clear guidelines are needed for professionals about the benefits of the programme - please see downloadable document below).
- Has safeguarding information been shared and any risk to the volunteer identified?
- Are safeguarding issues so complex that it would overstretch programme capacity?
It may be obvious that some referrals are inappropriate in which case the coordinator will explain to the referrer why it cannot be accepted. Or sometimes it may be important to phone the referrer for further information before making a decision.
Providing feedback to professionals about the outcome of their referral is good practice, and encourages appropriate referrals in the future.
Referral form and guidelines for professionals
Added 10/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
It’s inevitable that it won’t be possible to make contact with some referrals (incorrect contact details, messages not returned etc.). The reason for referral will guide you as to how long to keep trying.
The coordinator meets with each pregnant woman (and the expectant father or partner if possible) in her home – to enable her to explore and reflect on what would be of benefit to her in a relaxed, comfortable environment. (NB if domestic violence or other risk has been identified an alternative safe location will be needed). A risk assessment is carried out and any safeguarding issues are also explored.
Depending on the issues raised during the initial visit, the outcome might be:
- Only information and reassurance are needed
- Other local groups or services that might suit her better
- She might benefit from one-to-one peer support.
There are tools (downloadable below) to help focus this initial discussion and provide baseline scale data for monitoring purposes.
Initial visit pack
Added 10/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
Once a need for one-to-one peer support has been agreed, the coordinator will:
- Match a volunteer with the expectant parents
- Introduce the volunteer to the family and make the volunteer aware of any health and safety or safeguarding issues
- Contact the parents after several weeks to review how the peer-to-peer relationship is working (occasionally a different volunteer may need to be offered)
- Provide regular supervision to the volunteer
- Draw in other support for the family as appropriate (this could include organising a joint visit)
- Undertake any safeguarding responsibilities and share information with others involved in the family’s care on a ‘need to know’ basis.
It is helpful to gather quality and outcome data as part of the day-to-day delivery of the programme. This helps to avoid additional data collection that could feel intrusive. Several data collection tools are embedded in our programmes. Find out more in our setting up guide.
For example, baseline data is collected at 3 points during each parent’s journey of support. Completing the scales enables each parent to score (0-10) how they are feeling about 11 issues that their volunteer has been trained to support them with (e.g. feeling prepared for labour and birth).
- First coordinator visit: enables the pregnant woman and the coordinator to gain deeper insights into how peer support might be of benefit.
- Midway through the support: helps the parent to track their own progress and the volunteer to focus their support.
- At the end of support: helps the parent and the coordinator to reflect on whether the support has helped and any further support that might be needed.
This Managing Referrals Flow Chart (downloadable below) maps out the process.
Managing Referrals Flow Chart
Added 10/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
Setting a clear timeframe from the start about when the support is expected to finish provides clarity and avoids misunderstandings. (This timeframe will depend on your Theory of Change).
The aim is to enable each parent to feel confident to move forward without their peer supporter by the time the support finishes. Finishing support will be easy for some parents but difficult for others, so sensitivity and a degree flexibility are needed. Skilled volunteer supervision is important.
For example:
- Helping volunteers to avoid dependency and enable parents to build their own social support networks
- Affirming the deep sense of satisfaction of a volunteer from seeing a parent cope well without them, but there will inevitably be feelings of sadness too
- Depending on how the parent is feeling as the end point is coming closer, the gap between visits may need to be extended a little to ease the transition
- Some parents may decide they don’t need the support but may feel awkward saying this to their peer supporter.
Reasons for the support finishing
There are a variety of reasons why the support might end including:
- It ends as planned
- It ends earlier than planned because the parent decides they no longer need the support
- The parent withdraws saying the support wasn’t right for them
- The parent moves out of the area
- Contact with the parent is lost.
Monitoring the reasons for the support finishing (particularly the third and fifth reason) can be important when reviewing and improving your programme.