About the Charity
Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity provides innovative medical equipment, play activities, child and family support services, paediatric research and other enhancement projects to children, young people and their families treated in the Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow.
The Funding Process
After a successful funding application, Glasgow Children's Hospital Charity were accepted for a £16,960 grant over one year in August 2019. To find out more about the proposal process, please look here.
How has the funding helped?
Being in hospital as a new-born child without your mother can be an extremely stressful and upsetting time for parent and child alike with separation anxiety rife. That is why Cattanach have helped fund the ‘Helping us Grow’ project run by Glasgow’s Children Hospital Charity who are trialling Family Integrated Care (FIC).
Through parent surveys and interviews, three key needs were identified by parents with children in the neonatal ward. These needs were:
- Wanting to be more involved in the daily care of their child: “When I can get him out and hold him is a really good day.”
- Consistency in staff approach: “Some (staff) tell me I can bath her; others don’t let me.”
- Education, support and training: “We are here all day… it would be great to be doing everything we can.”
Bringing together research/best practice on Family Integrated Care from Canada (Mount Sinai/Sick Kids in Toronto), the HUG project at the Royal Hospital for Children (RHC) has changed the way that parents, nursing staff and medical staff are working with each other. With about 1,000 admissions per year and 200 members of staff, the RHC is now using these insights around nurture and attachment as a matter of routine, resulting in increased rates of weight gain, reduced parental stress and an overall shorter length of stay.
The HUG co-ordinator plays a vital role in supporting parents to develop a strong relationship with their pre-term babies (e.g. through encouraging to breastfeed, kangaroo mother care/skin to skin, parental presence, Book Bug) despite the adverse environment while continuously feeding feedback into nursing and medical practice, keeping communication channels open.
The project has ambitious goals for 2019-21, in particular around culture change around involving parents more intimately in the care of their preterm babies and awareness of nurture and attachment.
Summary
This programme has ambitious goals of changing the culture about involving parents more intimately in the care of preterm babies with an awareness of the importance of nurture and attachment.
