The Baby Charter can help units build a solid foundation for Family Integrated Care (FICare).
FICare is a model of care for babies born premature or sick, which promotes a culture of partnership between parents and carers and healthcare professionals working to care for babies on the neonatal unit.
Evidence shows that outcomes for babies are improved when parents and carers are partners in their baby’s care. FICare aims to ensure parents and carers can become confident primary caregivers and partners with the healthcare team.
FICare encourages neonatal healthcare teams to listen to parents, carers and families, to understand and respond to their needs, so they can create partnership with them in caring for their baby.
Through working closely with parents, carers, families and healthcare professionals, Bliss has developed an understanding of FICare and parent partnership which is based on their needs, experiences and challenges. We want to focus on the aspects of FICare that matter most to families and babies, and which reflect the potential of FICare to tackle inequalities in neonatal care:
- Hands-on care – parents and carers providing comfort and care directly to their babies
- Decision making – parents and carers fully and actively involved in care planning and decision making
- Individualised care – parents and carers’, and families’ needs are listened-to, understood and responded to.
- Tackling barriers – recognising and working to tackle the barriers parents and carers face to being partners in care.
- Service-user voice – creating opportunities for practice to develop based on understanding the lived experience of diverse families.
When engaging with the Bliss Baby Charter, healthcare professionals are required to examine the procedures, practices and environment of the unit and evidence how they are working towards integrating the above aspects of FICare.
The Baby Charter recommends units to listen to diverse parent voices and feedback, using this to make improvements. Partnerships between parents and healthcare professionals are the core of FICare, and these can only be achieved by effective listening and communication with families. Audits also help identify the inequalities and the potential barriers that the local neonatal population face, address them and introduce practical and meaningful changes to benefit families, thus improving equity on the neonatal unit and post-discharge.
Staff and parents at Frimley Park talk about the benefits and outcomes of using the Bliss Baby Charter in the video below.
