Westminster: wealth, opulence and socially isolated new mothers
In a noisy community hall in London, mothers and toddlers sit in a circle shaking tambourines and singing. At first glance it’s just another infant music session, but looking around, a different picture emerges. Nearby a mother, a sleeping baby in her arms, chats quietly to an attentive volunteer known as a maternity champion, while another cheerfully hands out cups of tea to a couple of exhausted-looking women, that tell-tale sign of new motherhood.
The maternity champions project, run by Paddington Development Trust in partnership with the NCT, the UK’s largest parent charity, launched as a two-year pilot in 2014, funded by Westminster council’s public health team. Funding has recently been extended for a further two years and the aim is to roll out the concept nationally. The pilot is part of a wider programme of NCT peer support projects across the country, to provide support, link parents to antenatal and postnatal services, and reduce the social isolation many new mothers feel.
In London’s Queen’s Park, which crosses the boroughs of Brent and Westminster, where the project takes place, wealth and poverty sit side by side. Despite being in central London, a third of the households in Queen’s Park earn less than £20,000 a year and parts of it fall within the top 10% most deprived in England. The volunteers, recruited from the local estates, have been trained through NCT’s Birth and Beyond community peer supporter scheme and run twice weekly drop-in sessions, open to all mothers in the area.
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