Building
Boxes, Building Futures
For just over
a year I have been the Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) for the Cheshire and
Merseyside Women’s & Children’s Services Partnership, in addition to my
duties as Chief Officer of NHS Halton CCG. The Partnership has brought
together 28 organisations with the shared aim making women’s and children’s
services financially and clinically sustainable and also improving the quality
of those services and the experience of the people who use them. The
Partnership operates under the brand of Improving Me (http://www.improvingme.org.uk/). On 7th October 2016 we
launched the first Baby Box programme in the North of the United Kingdom and
the first to roll out to new mums at scale across multiple boroughs and NHS
Clinical Commissioning Groups.
The
Partnership will be issuing 30,000 Baby Boxes to women in pregnancy over the
course of the initial pilot starting in Halton. The Baby Boxes will
encourage early engagement with maternity services and access to care for all
pregnant women. It will form part of their antenatal pathway and be supported
by Halton’s midwifery service, which is part of Bridgewater Community
Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.
The Baby Box
tradition, which originates from Finland, has been credited with reducing the
infant mortality rate in the country from 65 infant deaths per 1,000 births in
1938 to 2.26 per 1,000 births in 2015. The UK has some of highest rates
of infant mortality in Europe, ranking 22nd out of the 50 European countries
with 4.19 deaths per 1,000 births.
The boxes, which are made from a very thick cardboard and come with a firm foam mattress, waterproof mattress cover and a cotton sheet, are traditionally used in Finland as a baby’s bed for up to the first eight months of their life. They replace need for the traditional Moses basket or cot, it is thought the small size of the Baby Box prevents babies from rolling onto their tummies, which experts think can contribute to sudden infant death syndrome.
The boxes, which are made from a very thick cardboard and come with a firm foam mattress, waterproof mattress cover and a cotton sheet, are traditionally used in Finland as a baby’s bed for up to the first eight months of their life. They replace need for the traditional Moses basket or cot, it is thought the small size of the Baby Box prevents babies from rolling onto their tummies, which experts think can contribute to sudden infant death syndrome.
Most
importantly, families receiving a Baby Box will have access to the Baby Box University, a
comprehensive maternal and childcare education platform, available from
pregnancy onwards. Developed with leading medical experts around the world,
Baby Box University enables each of its healthcare partners to customise the
educational content to suit local need. Available in a variety of languages,
the content transcends the language barriers that can be a problem in diverse
populations.
I am really proud that we have been able to
launch this initiative in Halton. It is a fantastic opportunity to show
local mums that their NHS commissioners and providers of maternity services
care about them and their babies at all stages of pregnancy. This is an
important investment in our future population that encourages healthier
outcomes for families. Well done to all involved, particularly Cath
McClennan, Programme Director with Improving Me, who was instrumental in
bringing this initiative to Cheshire and Merseyside.Simon Banks
