Leicester: New parents to get extra support with £1.5m project

A £1.5m project to provide specialist support to new parents in the first 1,001 days of their babies’ lives is being piloted in Leicester.

The Best Start for Life program aims to provide activities, workshops and counseling to families and will run until May 2025.

A new digital contact for antenatal health and wellbeing will also be available as part of the pilot project.

Deputy Mayor of Leicester, Sarah Russell, said the project would provide additional support and services to families.

According to leading health experts, the care given in the first 1,001 days of a child’s life – from conception to age two – has a greater influence on its future than at any other time in life.

The Leicester pilot – funded by the Department of Health and Social Care – is led by Leicester City Council, Leicester Partnership NHS Trust (LPT), University Hospitals Leicester (UHL) and local charities Heads Up Leicester and Leicester Mammas.

The council said the new digital prenatal health and wellbeing contact, which will provide access to advice and information to help with a happy and healthy pregnancy, will be available to all pregnant women in the city, in addition to four free face-to-faces. prenatal sessions.

University Hospitals Leicester and Leicester Mammas are said to be recruiting and training parents with experience of breastfeeding to become voluntary hospital breastfeeding support colleagues and Heads Up Leicester will run therapeutic playgroups.

Sam Newby, Family Services Manager for LPT, said: “Our newly formed team of professionals are excited to support our families in their critical first 1,001 days while complementing our existing service offering.” .

UHL’s lead infant feeding midwife, Ann Raja, said the pilot project had enabled its breastfeeding support programme, which is available at Leicester General Hospital, to be extended to Leicester Royal Infirmary.

She said it also enabled her team to work with Leicester Mammas to provide peer breastfeeding support phone calls to new mums in their first few days at home with their new baby.

Sally Etheridge, from Leicester Mammas, said: “We have been providing peer breastfeeding support to families for many years.

“Having peer breastfeeding supporters on the wards and embedded in maternity services means that in the crucial time around the birth of the baby, new mums and dads can have unhurried time to ask questions and get the support they need to start breastfeed.”

Lindsay Woodward, chief executive of Heads Up Leicester, said the project was an “innovative collaboration”, adding: “This investment in testing new ways of working together will bring new opportunities for families to receive care, advice and support from a number of organizations.”