What we've learned
Across the country these high-quality, evidence-based services are helping to create safer, more nurturing environments for infants – and what we're learning can help many more families.
New findings from an evaluation of our relationship-based perinatal education programme, Baby Steps suggest it can support parents in being better equipped to provide sensitive, responsive care to their babies, as parents reported decreased anxiety, improved relationship satisfaction with their partners and babies, and improved birth outcomes such as reported reductions in premature birth, low birth weight and caesarean sections.
But we can't do this on our own. We would love to work with new partners to make this programme available to many more families across the UK.
Our evidence and impact
Becoming a parent is a challenging time for almost all mums and dads, but for some the difficulties can be overwhelming. Add in the context of mental health problems, problems with drugs and alcohol or other adversities, and these difficulties are further exacerbated.
Our'Spotlight' reports put focus on the real issues that real families face during this time and raise awareness of particularly vulnerable groups. In partnership with Barnardo's, our Spotlight report on the criminal justice system launching this month highlights the 'invisibility' of babies affected by the criminal justice system. And launching later this month, our Spotlight report on homelessness, in partnership with the Anna Freud Centre, highlights the serious impact unstable housing can have on families.
Improving the lives of vulnerable babies and families across the UK requires a cultural shift toward early intervention - the NSPCC is calling for better early support for parents during this period to ensure that all babies are safe and able to thrive.
Seeing early intervention first hand with Kelly and her baby, it's clear that timing is everything. There is an urgent necessity to act now and translate the rhetoric into reality. Achieving real change demands collaborative working, innovative service design and delivery, and crucially – a belief that it's never too early, and never too late.