Overview, clinical approach and evaluation

Overview

The Early Parenthood Service is a targeted service integrated into the Blackpool Early Help and Start for life offer delivered by experienced and specialist nurses. A request for support can be made for families with their consent who meet the eligibility criteria and be made from 12 weeks until 28 weeks in pregnancy. Consideration will be given for exceptions of this time scale for example for a parent who booked late or had not received midwifery care in pregnancy. Following receipt of the request for support a multiagency triage panel will review the referral and advise if this is the most appropriate service for the family or if a different service would be more appropriate. The person making the request for support and the family will be notified of the decision with their wishes considered for support by the recommended service.

The Early Parenthood nurse will work alongside families to identify their own strengths, needs and hopes and identify specific areas of their life they feel they need extra support with and make changes to. Using a variety of evidence-based tools and interventions the Nurse will work alongside the family to design a personalised plan specific to their needs. The aim is for the families to increase their confidence and knowledge in the care of their children as well as strengthen and develop their own personal and community support networks. The targeted work with families will be regularly reviewed and a plan put in place for when they move on from working with the Early Parenthood service, liaising with other services across the Blackpool start for life partnership as appropriate.

Please do contact the team if you would like to discuss before making a request for support

Clinical approaches

The clinical approach underpinning the Early Parenthood service  is strengths-based. Nurses work alongside clients providing information and guidance about specific domains relating to their pregnancy and parenthood:

  • Life skills
  • Your health and wellbeing
  • Looking after your baby
  • Your baby's development
  • Safety and stability
  • Connecting with your baby
  • Relationship
  • Family and support network
  • Goals and aspirations

The Nurse in partnership with the families will use an outcomes star to assess, plan and evaluate the goals of the family and support them in their journey of change. The frequency of visits, goals set and interventions used will be personlaised  for  the individual situation of each family and developed in conjunction with them.

For many clients, a therapeutic relationship with an Early Parenthood Nurse can bring consistency, the space to develop a positive therapeutic relationship and offer them a positive role model which they may not have experienced before. The Early Parenthood nurse will encourage families to work with other appropriate services. In cases where additional safeguarding support is necessary, the Early Parenthood nurses can ensure that families access children’s social care quickly and effectively

All Early Parenthood nurses receive supervision from the Early Parenthood Lead nurse, peer supervison and monthly psychology supervision. Regular supervision provides time for the nurse to reflect and analyse their work with families and to make robust plans to ensure that the needs of the baby remain paramount.   It gives the opportunity to question their own feelings and the influence these may have on their decision making.

Evaluation

The Early Parenthood Service is a new service, data will be collected and reviewed to determine the effectiveness of the service and changes made dynamically in accordance with the findings.  Consent with be sought from Families for any data collected.