Home > In hospital > Looking after your baby on the neonatal unit > Family-centred care

What is family-centred care?

Being involved in your baby’s care while they are in hospital can really help you and your baby. Units should support you to find the best way to be involved.

You might hear health professionals call this family-centred care. You might also hear people saying family-integrated care or FiCare. This is a more advanced form of involving families.

Family-centred care means involving the family as much as possible in the daily care and routine of their baby.

Many neonatal units now care for babies and families in this way, and Bliss work to help them do this through the Bliss Baby Charter. The Bliss Baby Charter is a practical framework for neonatal units to self-assess the quality of family-centred care they deliver.

At first, it can be hard to know what you can do for your baby on the neonatal unit.

Getting involved on the unit can have a positive effect on you, your baby and your wider family. You might not feel very confident at first, but many families find that getting involved helps to build that confidence.

What can I be involved with?

Parents are sometimes surprised at how much of their baby’s care they can get involved with, day to day. You can talk with health professionals on the unit to support you with this.

If it’s possible, you might like to try:

You can also comfort your baby, especially when they’re having tests which might distress them.

You could spend time watching your baby and getting to know how they show you what they need and how they are feeling. These are sometimes called cues.

Giving your baby something that smells of you can also help. The health professionals on your unit can help with this. If you’re unsure about any of these ways to get involved, have a chat with health professionals on your unit. Everyone is different and there is no right or wrong way to be involved.

What can't I do for my baby?

Every baby will be getting different care, depending on what they need. But in many cases, even if your baby is born very prematurely or is very unwell, you might be surprised by how involved you can be.

It might be that, to begin with, your baby isn’t well enough for you to do all of the things listed above. But the staff will support you to find ways to be involved.

For example, if your baby was born very prematurely, they might not be well enough to breastfeed yet. But the unit will support you to find other ways to feed your baby, such as giving them expressed milk or helping them to feed by tube.

If your baby is having help with their breathing through a ventilator, having skin-to-skin care can still be done. The staff will support you to do this in a safe and comfortable way for you both.

If you cannot hold your baby outside of the incubator right away, you can usually put your hands on your baby in a comforting way. This can help you feel connected with them and lets them know that you are there.

Bliss is funding research to find out if a parent's touch could help manage pain in premature babies.

You can also ask staff about other things you can do, like reading and talking to your baby, and using smell to connect.

If you are at all unsure about what you can or can’t do for your baby, you can talk to the staff on the unit. They will be able to tell you how they support parents and families to get involved in the care of their baby.