Northamptonshire organisations come together to inspire the next generation of readers

The Baby Basics team collected the books from the Northampton General Hospital

Thanks to the generosity of local businesses, Northampton General Hospital are proud to have partnered with local charity Baby Basics Northampton to provide books for their new parent baskets.

Baby Basics create bespoke baskets for new parents who may be struggling to reach the financial or practical demands of having a baby. These include providing equipment and essentials to mothers and families including but not limited to teenage mums, people seeking asylum and women fleeing domestic abuse and trafficking.

Following on from a strong working partnership the two organisations have come together with support from Igloo books to form a new initiative called the Baby Book Club, which encourages parents and carers to read to their babies.

Julie Bainbridge, Baby Basics Northampton Operations Lead, explained the importance of the partnership working “Baby Basics Northampton is so proud to be working in partnership with Northampton General Hospital and Igloo Books. Reading is such a special time for both mum and new baby. We are really pleased that we can encourage reading with the introduction of the books provided by Northampton General Hospital and Igloo Books within our starter packs.”

The Baby Book Club has been created with the support of local company Igloo books, who have donated three baby friendly books. The books will be distributed to families in need of support from Baby Basics and feature a little card from the three organisations explaining how reading to babies from birth helps them to develop and grow.

Presenting the books to the charity Emma Wimpress, Head of Volunteer Services, described why Northampton General wanted to do something to support Baby Basics. “We were asked to support Baby Basics and wanted to help to provide some books to them for parents to read to their babies. We know from our midwifery colleagues that reading to babies from birth helps babies to grow and develop their skills such as recognising shapes, numbers as well as promoting attachment and bonding. We’re really proud to have launched the Baby Book Club with support from Igloo books who kindly donated the baby books to us. We hope to continue to work closely with Baby Basics to help them to provide new parents in Northamptonshire with things they need for their babies.”

A lot of referrals to Baby Basics come from midwives in the community and in the hospital. There are a wide range of reasons why families might need support from Baby Basics and the teams work closely with midwives to help to make the donations as personal to the baby and parent as possible.

Michelle Hardwick, ward sister on the neonatal Gosset ward explained how Baby Basics makes a difference to new parents of premature babies. “We sometimes have parents whose babies have been delivered early meaning they may not have been seen by the midwife yet and have been identified as needing additional support or help. In this situation or when families may be struggling to provide for their babies we contact the Baby Basics team. They ask us some basic information such as if the baby is a boy or a girl and then they put together a basket for us. When we bring it to the parents, they are usually so over the moon with it and absolutely love it. As well as them bringing things to us we work together to help to provide things for each other. For example sometimes we receive donations of clothes or knitted items but these can often be too big for some of our babies so we can then donate these to Baby Basics and help them to provide more baskets for other parents.”