Our Impact
All that we do at the Brazelton Centre UK is focused on giving newborn babies a voice. Come and see how we make an impact through our work with families and practitioners.
Scroll DownBabies' first months
What happens during the first months of life can have a huge impact on a child. Every child deserves to have the best start in life and every parent deserves to be supported as they transition to parenthood.
Positive and responsive interaction between a parent and their newborn baby plays an essential role in that baby’s social and emotional development, by building networks and connections in the brain that will set that individual up for life and help them make sense of their world. Newborns are born not only as social beings ready for interaction, but with competent communication methods that reliably tell their caregivers how they are feeling and what they need, as well as what they like and dislike.
Some parents struggle to make sense of what their newborn baby is saying. Some parents may not be aware that babies communicate from birth, or how they communicate. The focus of care giving can be solely on physical aspects such as feeding and changing. Some babies are very hard to read and their signals can be confusing, so it can be helpful to have a practitioner to support parents in these early days.
The Brazelton Centre UK aims to support and empower parents to understand their baby’s unique communication. In a collaborative way, we can help parents to develop more sensitive interactions and see their baby as a person, which may result in increased confidence for parents and contribute to healthy emotional and social development for the baby as they grow.
Health Practitioners help parents to see the strengths of their baby using the NBO and NBAS approach.
Professionals who care for babies, such as Health Visitors, Midwives, Paediatricians and Neonatal Nurses, are in the perfect position to share with parents their baby’s unique communication.
We provide training and certification to practitioners in two recognised relationship-building techniques for understanding newborn’s communication, the Newborn Behavioural Observations (NBO) and the Neonatal Behavioural Assessment Scale (NBAS). Using a positive, strength-based approach, practitioners use these tools/techniques to share the baby with the parents.
Parents who have had an NBO or NBAS with their practitioner report that they:
- feel more confident in responding to their baby’s cues,
- feel closer to their baby
- have an enhanced relationship with their baby
There have also been results showing a reduction of postnatal depressive symptoms and increased father involvement
Change occurs in the context of a relationship. Practitioners relationships with parents is key as they provide information about baby development to parents. We believe that all families can benefit from an NBO or NBAS session with a certified practitioner, because we get very positive feedback from parents after an NBO and NBAS. Parents themselves say everyone should have a session with a certified practitioner, in order that every baby’s voice is heard and every parent is supported in understanding their baby’s language.
Over the next years, we are going to work hard to reach more families and health practitioners in the UK and beyond through the NBO, the NBAS and other projects.
We aim to do this by:
- Providing training to more health professionals, in order to increase the number of Registered Certified NBO and NBAS Practitioners.
- Offering more information and guidance directly to parents.
- Raising awareness of the importance of “Newborn Baby Communication” for the emotional and social development of the baby.
- Continuing to do research with the NBO and NBAS in order to evaluate the outcomes.
Our social impact will include:
Parents will have better interactions and relationships with their baby
They will feel equipped and empowered to understand their baby’s unique communication cues and to respond in a way that meets their baby’s individual needs. This will lead to improved families’ mental health and well-being.
Practitioners will be more able to support families with newborn babies
They will have more knowledge, skills and confidence in supporting parent-baby relationships in the first days, weeks and months of life and be passionate about sharing with parents the uniqueness of each baby.
Society will have an increased general awareness of “Newborn Baby Communication” and its importance
More people will understand that sensitive communication with newborn babies is a basic need and appreciate the importance of promoting positive interactions for the healthy development of children later in life.
