Pause Greenwich and the HOPE Box Mums
By Julie Brooks, Practice Lead for Pause Greenwich
There has been a Pause team in Greenwich for seven years now. The women we have worked with have been able to achieve some amazing outcomes and we can evidence a significant reduction in infant removals within the borough. One of the positive developments we have been able to achieve, is access to ways that women can build their confidence and self-esteem through the sharing of their lived experiences, to provide influencing and learning, both on a local and national scale. We have had women that have been part of television and newspaper articles, art and poetry exhibitions, lectures, presentations, peer support groups, interview panels for the local and national Pause teams, national campaigns and research.
In February 2022, Dr Karen Broadhurst’s team from the Lancaster University, alongside the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, published their ‘Born into Care’ research and good practice guidelines for removals of babies from hospital post birth. Over the last three years, I have been supporting women working with the Pause Greenwich and Southwark teams to contribute to the research, by being part of their lived experience advisory group. We had regular meetings with research fellow Claire Mason and other women across the UK who had had babies removed from hospital post-birth, to support and influence the process and development of the qualitive research that was undertaken.
The members of the group made a decision to call themselves the HOPE Mums (Hold On Pain Eases) and wanted to do more to support the pain and trauma for others who will have this experience in the future. They discovered that some midwives in a few NHS Trusts have developed an intervention for mothers of stillborn babies, by providing memory boxes as a way of maintaining a contact to the baby they had lost. Inspired by this, the group created HOPE Boxes, which are now being given to mums who have been separated from their babies soon after birth, as part of a pilot in a number of NHS Trusts across the UK.
Claire Mason explains:
“The HOPE Boxes are designed to help mothers capture important memories of their time with their baby prior to separation and, importantly, to promote the ongoing connection between them and their baby post-separation, whilst court proceedings are considering the longer-term plans for the child. If the outcome of care proceedings does lead to the baby being placed permanently out of the mother’s care, the HOPE Boxes are also designed to support longer-term loss and grief work with the mother and life story and identity work with the child. HOPE Boxes include important items to the mother and baby. For example, photographs, footprints, cot cards, and matching soft toys and blankets. Two boxes are created: one box stays with the mother and the other follows the baby into kinship care, foster care or their adoptive placement if this is the final outcome. The mother also receives a letter and a poem written by the HOPE Mums, with the aim of providing an ongoing connection to other mothers who have experienced similar forms of loss, thus mitigating feelings of stigma and shame”.
In September 2022, there was a national launch of the HOPE Boxes and the film made by the HOPE Mums to explain their experiences and why the boxes were created. Alongside Claire Mason and some of the midwives that worked on the projects, the HOPE Mums have also now received a National Safeguarding Star award from NHS England for their amazing work. Click here to find out more and watch the film made by this incredibly brave and remarkable group of women and to hear more about how they hope to be able to reduce the trauma of post-natal separation for mums in the future.
