Dr Christine Puckering is on a Winston Churchill Fellowship Tour, looking at how babies at social risk are identified early, even in pregnancy, and what services are put in place to promote a secure attachment between mother and child and father and child.
Christine is going to provide regular blogs on her tour of Netherlands, Iceland, Norway & Finland.
I am nearly at the end of my time in the Netherlands and trying to put discussions with academics, government agencies and service providers into some sort of order.
It is harder here to see what is so different from the UK. There is a terrific service called the Kraamzoorg, a maternity nurse who comes to the new family’s home for several hours daily for about a week to support the mother and child, check on their health and wellbeing and also help in the home with shopping, cleaning, laundry and collecting older children from school. The Kraamzoorg, is not a midwife but reports any concerns back to the midwives and health nurses.
The Kraamzoorg and the emphasis on work-life balance is the biggest difference I can see between the UK and The Netherlands. Recent strategy changes and budget cuts are going to lead to outcomes which are not yet known. Let’s hope the good things are not lost!
Picture from a cafe in Leiden
