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.
FICare in the UK
FICare is recognised as crucial to improving neonatal care across all nations of the UK. In England, FICare is recommended as part of the Neonatal Critical Care review (2019). In Scotland the ‘Best Start Five Year Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Transformation’ includes a strong focus on parent involvement in care. In Wales, a nationwide approach to FICare is being developed.
In 2019, the British Association of Perinatal Medicine (BAPM) produced ‘Family Integrated Care: A Framework for Practice’ with support from Bliss. This showed that partnership with parents is built on a commitment to the development of a culture on units which values, listens to and responds to parents and carers, creating environments in which families are integrated into the unit. In this environment, parents and carers can be empowered to be primary caregivers.
What does Bliss say about FICare?
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.
How does Bliss support FICare delivery?
All of Bliss’s work reflects this FICare ethos. Our work supporting parents and carers helps them to be better informed, more confident and less isolated, helping them to be hands-on carers and partners in decision making.
We support policy-makers to tackle barriers such as the financial costs of having a baby in neonatal care. Our work with researchers helps them to include diverse parents and carers’ experiences in their work.
Bliss’ work with healthcare professionals aims to provide tools and resources to support them to deliver FICare in practice. These include the Bliss Baby Charter, which defines and helps units establish the foundations of FICare, and training which brings together healthcare professionals and parents/carers to learn about key topics related to FICare, such as the role of Allied Health Professionals in enabling partnership in care.