During October 2020, Parents 1st UK hosted a two-day virtual conference to celebrate volunteering in pregnancy, birth and beyond, bringing together the peer support community.
It was a fantastic event, with inspiring speakers and great participation from delegates which resulted in some very fruitful discussions! We learnt a lot and will be taking forward some of the points raised.
During the event, Celia Suppiah introduced Parents 1st UK’s brand new, open source community website, encouraging all to register on the platform to be able to learn, share and connect, with the goal of working together to ensure quality peer support flourishes across the UK.
I've had a look at the platform, it looks fantastic! It is going to be incredibly helpful, especially as we will be welcoming a new staff member soon, a peer support coordinator due to new funding!
We heard from a range of speakers over the two days:
On Day One, Jenny McLeish shared latest research and discussed why perinatal peer support is so special, Vita Maiorano joined us from the Australian Centre for Social Innovation to share how the pandemic had affected them across the globe and how they adapted their support model in response, this was followed by Tom McCulloch from A Better Start, the National Lottery Community Fund who shared some great insights into what they, as funders, are hoping to achieve, and finally we learnt from Sarah Darton and Arifa Naeem from Family Links about how they had successfully successfully worked with volunteers from Muslim communities to adapt The Parenting Puzzle programme.
On Day Two, the line up continued with Sarah McMullen, Belinda Ngugi and Kerry Smith from NCT sharing the successes and challenges they faced adapting their programmes to the pandemic, Emily Slater from the Maternal Mental Health Alliance followed to discuss the ‘Everyone’s Business’ campaign, in particular their progress to date and the next steps, Jo Robins then talked about social prescribing opportunities and how that links with perinatal support, and finally we welcomed Tayo Medupin from Shift Design who presented the Parent People Boost project and how self care for those who give is so fundamentally important.
We thank each and every one of our speakers for contributing and making this event so successful.
Presentations from our guest speakers were interspersed throughout with case studies from parents and peer supporters, bringing us back to celebrating the power of peer support.
I started as part of the breastfeeding support in Southend. I went along as a parent in desperate need of support and guidance, moved on to doing their peer support training, became a parent champion... Since becoming a parent champion, A Better Start Southend have really helped to remind me just who I am, they helped me regain not only my name, and a purpose, but I found my voice, and a whole new group that I now call colleagues. I attend governance meetings, have spoken at the council’s International Women’s Day event, and have a passion for co-production and helping others to discover just how important that can be to the community. I’m also currently training to be a breastfeeding counsellor thanks to a passion the original peer support training sparked in me. It really has made such an impact on mine and my families lives.