The opportunity

For each week COVID-19 continues to disrupt, over 12,000 children will be born. Six months of social distancing will see around 300,000 new babies born. Under lockdown, access to healthcare workers, basic necessities, community groups and social support structures are often impossible, leaving parents and children cut off from crucial services that support wellbeing during the first 1000 days. Home-Start UK asked organisations working in this field what could be done.

Ahhh – this has cheered me up no end. I’m actually so touched. Thank you.

Response to Parent People Boosts

Our response

In collaboration with a network of 16 parent and baby charities, we created parentpeopleboosts.org. It’s a small gift of thanks to all of the people dedicated to supporting parents in communities across the UK.

“Covid-19 is presenting real challenges to new and expectant parents and as family organisations we wanted to help parents make sense of what support is available, even under lockdown. This collaboration is aimed to bring things together, understand any gaps and bring service design expertise from Clear Honest Design, Dartington and Shift to the challenge, so we can respond really quickly.”

Peter Grigg, Chief Executive, Home-Start UK

So far:

Initiation discussion with 16 collaborators from 10 organisations including Home-Start UK, NCT, Best Beginnings, Family Action, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (EPEC), The Institute of Health Visiting, Nesta, Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, Little Village, and Parent-Infant Foundation came together to discuss this idea and support in pushing this forward.
Design hops with representatives from baby and parenting charities, plus service designers and developers, rapidly developing concepts
Virtual design studio launched to aid collaboration
Lightning Talks by Max Landry from Peppy, Dr Crispin Day from South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (EPEC), Sarah Cook from Home-Start Oldham, Stockport & Tameside, Iona Lawrence from Connection Coalition, Dr Shaima Hassan from NIHR, and Sophia Parker from Little Village
Partnership with Clear Honest Design (concept development), Rebecca Birch (concept development) and Jane Mbanefo (visuals) part-funded by Catalyst Digital Teams.
Three digital care packages designed and launched by Shift in September, October, November
Parent People Boosts shared as a collective design case study shared with Children in Scotland and at the Parents 1st National Conference 2020
The gift of care spread to circa 3k unique visitors to parentpeopleboosts.org