Posted by Les Hutchinson, Head of Quality and Performance
For our second Executive Showcase we visited the Child Protection Team in Arbroath.
The team shared information about a fantastic initiative working with women to ensure that they have a positive pregnancy and the healthiest baby possible. This initiative was developed a part of the Early Years Collaborative.
The focus is on mothers who present as high risk because of substance use. Previous experiences with this target group indicates that mums are reluctant to engage with pre-birth activities, fail to turn up for NHS appointments, and don’t disclose relevant information at the appropriate times. Typically in such cases babies are born with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) – the babies are born with drug dependency and suffer withdrawal symptoms when the drug intake is removed after birth.
The project aims included increasing the birth weight of babies, reduce prematurity and improving the bond between mother and baby.
The team’s work involved spending more time with mothers during pregnancy, providing practical support and guidance and, crucially, building trust.
We heard examples of reminding mum about health appointments by writing it on calendars, sending text reminders; helping mum get to appointments by providing bus timetables and, in some cases, providing transport.
One benefit of providing the transport is that the member of staff is able to spend time with the mother and chatting in a safe environment. Sometimes the staff member will attend the appointment with mum-to-be (if she wants), which also allows a follow-on conversation to clarify and reinforce messages from midwives.
Other practical assistance was also provided such as teaching basic cooking skills to improve diet, preparing soup together to be frozen for the next few days.
This type of work is time-intensive, but the outcomes demonstrate the value. The team worked with 5 mothers during the project. All of the babies have stayed with family members after birth, in the past many babies have been taken in to local authority care. All of the babies were healthy at birth (one had low birth weight), and none of them suffered NAS.
During the project the nature of the relationship between staff and families changed as trust developed. One mum-to-be commented:
“I’ve never considered how my life’s going to impact my baby.”
In the future, the team would like to track the progress of these babies over the long-term and share some of the learning with other teams dealing with lower tariff families.
The initiative is being evaluated to see if it can be resourced on an ongoing basis.
SLT members attending the showcase were impressed with the findings of the initiative, but were even more impressed with the enthusiasm and commitment of the Child Protection Team, who all made strenuous efforts to support the project and achieved fantastic outcomes for 5 Angus babies and their families.
