26/09/2025
A project that is part of our MNVP workplan this year to support and we're really looking forward to collating and sharing feedback from the new service
🎥📺🤗 Did you see us on Granada Reports earlier today?
Keep your eyes peeled on this evening's Granada Reports if not! You should see some of our lovely Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust maternity colleagues on there, talking about a fantastic new project – the development of a specialist Young Parent Maternity Service, a regional first to benefit our area’s youngest parents-to-be! 🙏
The Baby Beat charity team has recently received a grant of £199,800 from NHS Charities Together Innovation Challenge Fund to launch this unique, gold standard Young Parent Maternity Service. With this generous donation, we’ll be working in partnership with our clinical maternity colleagues to fund two specialist midwives and a maternity support worker, who are already in post - Linda Hodkinson, Michelle Butterworth and Sophie Barnes.
They will work together as Team Blossom to provide wraparound care for mums-to-be aged up to 19-years-old and their partners from Preston and the surrounding areas.
Between 130 and 140 women under the age of 20 from the area give birth each year. For them, the new service means they will have a named midwife, who they will meet at their antenatal booking-in appointment. The same midwife or a “buddy midwife” from the team will then be by their side throughout their pregnancy check-ups, birth and up to post birth. The care delivered by the service’s team will also include home visits and invitations for the young parents to drop-in sessions, coffee mornings, preparation for birth and antenatal education classes.
Rebecca Arestidou, our trust, grant, fundraising impact and project officer, who worked to help to secure the funding for the service, explained: “There are some pretty depressing statistics from research into young parenthood.
“While there are exceptions to the rule, there is evidence to suggest that teenage mothers are three times more likely to smoke during their pregnancy, three times more likely to suffer post-natal depression and have higher rates of poor mental health for up to three years after birth. They are also half as likely to breastfeed and are 22 per cent more likely to be living in poverty by the age of 30.
They have a two in three chance of their relationship with baby’s dad ending either during pregnancy or within the first three years after baby is born, while very young dads are twice as likely to be unemployed by the age of 30.”
Rebecca continued: “There is 30 per cent greater risk of stillbirth and a 60 per cent higher risk of infant mortality among very young mothers. Their babies have a 30 per cent higher rate of low birth weight, are twice as likely to be hospitalised for accidental injury or gastro-enteritis and are significantly slower to reach a range of developmental markers.
“As they grow into children, those born to teenage mothers have a 63 per cent higher risk of living in poverty and as the Preston area is already among the 20 per cent of most deprived areas in the country, the need to break this negative cycle is hugely important to our community. We believe our new Young Parent Maternity Service will help us achieve change by making pregnancy, birth and having a new baby a fully supported, positive and joyous life experience that will re-set the outlook for mum, dad and baby’s future.”
We can't wait to see the difference that this service will make for the young parents and their babies - thank you so much to NHS Charities Together, and all involved, in helping this project come to fruition 🧡
