Anyone and everyone can find out more about developing a perinatal volunteer peer support initiative and the benefits it provides, access guidance and download FREE tools to get a new initiative up and running or develop an existing one.
The benefits of quality peer support to mothers, fathers, babies and communities are profound.
For this reason, Parents 1st have created a brand-new website to enable more effective perinatal volunteering and peer support programmes to flourish.
Volunteer peer support initiatives are making real improvements to personalised care, leading to achieving healthier pregnancies, less complicated births and happier babies. And, we know that when these initiatives are managed, resourced and delivered well, there are huge benefits not only to mothers, fathers, partners, and babies but also to professionals involved in their care.
Sadly, it is still the norm that the well-evidenced impact of peer support remains largely unrecognised and many initiatives struggle to survive.
Celia explains: As a public health nurse and previously a midwife, the public service ethos that was at the heart of my experience when working for the NHS, has remained despite resigning from the NHS in 2008 to set up Parents 1st social enterprise. After spending the past 30 years developing early prevention ‘Community Parent’ volunteer programmes within and outside the NHS, including a high-quality perinatal volunteer programme developed in Essex over the past 10 years and two affiliate programmes in Tower Hamlets and Derby, the need to generate a profit in order to survive and to protect intellectual property rights has always felt at odds with a need to share knowledge, skills and experience for the benefit of others.
However, as we enter a new decade, we at Parents 1st UK are on a mission to change this! We want more quality perinatal peer support initiatives to flourish but we understand the barriers (time, resource, knowledge) that can get in the way.
So, we have created this new “open access” website that shares the Community Parent perinatal volunteer model and everything we have learnt about making it work in practice over several decades – and in doing so we hope to enable more parents and babies to benefit from quality perinatal peer support, which is the core mission of Parents 1st.
Intended to be a hub for a community of peer support advocates, we are confident that it will lead to more parents getting the support and encouragement they deserve during this critical time in their lives.
Please do take the time to browse the site and find out how to connect, share and download. Our team will be on hand to answer any questions you have.
We look forward to e-meeting you all!
Celia Suppiah, CEO Parents 1st UK