It takes a village”: Mapping healthcare support in the perinatal period using a participatory approach (MaPP)

What we already know

Pregnancy to two-years is an important time for families. When families seek help for their baby they say health services seem confusing and hard to access. A recent report pointed out that services for children need to work better together, especially because babies and children are growing, so delays in care have a serious impact.

What we want to do

1. Produce a map of the support services in the UK for parents worried about their baby’s health
2. Understand how the different parts of the map fit together
3. Understand how some groups of families (such as families in poverty, families who struggle with English) find help for their baby’s health
4. Develop a network of people who want to work together to help new families.

How we are going to do it

We will draw a map of all the places parents and carers in the UK go to when they are worried about their baby’s health. To do this we will hold an online meeting for anyone who works in a job role where they try to help people who are pregnant and parents or carers of children up to 2 years. We will ask them to list where they think parents get support from.
We will then ask parents where they go for support. We will try to talk to parents who don’t normally take part in research.
We will ask them about how they found getting help when they were worried about their baby’s health. We will also make a website where anyone can tell us about their experiences; and make sure these are also included in the map.
Everyone who contributes will be invited to add their email address to a group of people who are interested in working together to carry out further research into how to improve services.

What we will produce

The main output of this project will be a map of current support networks for families worried about their baby’s health in the UK. This will include the opinions of groups who might not have been heard before and will think about how the services might work together or against each other. Looking at this map might help us work out where we can make the biggest difference.
This map could help show what is missing, supporting decisions for researchers, health professionals and policy makers to make changes in early support for parents support for parents. This would help with future research, funding applications, changes to services, and new support for families.
We will also make a contact list of people who are interested in working together in future research.