To think the NCT should be free or much cheaper?

[TheHouseOnBellSt]

So to many people £48 for an 18 month membership is nothing...it's spare change. But that charge effectively exlcludes anyone on a really low income.

So only those who can afford it will benefit from what is essentially meant to be a charity to support parents or parents to be.

Their "vision" is copied below

Our vision is a world in which parents are valued and supported to build a strong society, believing that a child’s early years significantly impact upon the future they help to shape.

Our charitable purpose

We offer information and support in pregnancy, birth and early parenthood.
We campaign to improve maternity care and ensure better services and facilities for new parents.
We aim to give every parent the chance to make informed choices.
We want to make sure that everyone has access to our services and activities.

But only if you have a spare 48 quid?

this Guardian Article claims that NHS antenatal classes are patchy...and that the middle classes are signing up to the NCT ones which are private of course...so basically the working classes and the unwaged are either getting nothing or not much.

WHY is the NCT a middle class thing? It's meant to be a charity!

It's all very well to say it 'should be free' or cheaper, but would you volunteer to be trained and then give up your time for free to teach parents? My SIL is an NCT group teacher, why shouldn't she get paid for her time?

Also, I used to live between a very middle class and a more working class town, and my NCT group was definitely not just middle class. One couple both worked in Tesco, another was cabin crew and plasterer.

But you don't have to be a member. I did the classes (which yes were expensive), I've been to the Nct nearly new sales. But I've never paid for membership.

If it were free, who would pay for the NCT teachers to train and work?

Who do you propose funds it OP?

Yabu. Nct is optional, it's not the nhs. I paid for an Nct course, enjoyed it and glad I signed up. Are you suggesting the Nct should fold due to not everyone being able to afford classes? That's life OP, non eessentials like theatre, cinema, sports clubs all cost money, should they all be stopped because the poor can't afford them?

Nhs antenatal and post natal care should be improved. Nct in our area was like the worst judge -y thread about bf that you have ever read on mn. Nhs care here was just rubbish
Care for pregnant women and new mums needs a massive overhaul. Congratulations to anyone lucky enough to get decent care paid or otherwise.

I ponied up the £200, a lot of money to DH and I at the time, because I was told there were no antenatal classes available in my area. And to the poster who was sure SureStart would provide plenty, dream on!

The NCT use its money to subside projects in deprived parts of the county. They also campaign for better maternity and breastfeeding support for everyone.

The classes cost a lot to put on. It is not only training up the teacher, but hire of a hall and materials. There is so much info on the web that NCT classes aren't as essential other than for middle class mummies to make friends.

The NCT class I went to was hell although the teacher was lovely and the content was excellent. I was the youngest by about ten years. I had snide comments from one of the fathers that I wasn't married. Thankfully the lovely tutor tore him apart. I hated the competitive parenting aspect and parents in my group discussing which prep school to put their bump down for so that they could get a place at the state grammar. The snide father told me that my bump was secondary modern material.

The NCT is brilliant charity and does so much more than act as a social group for middle class mummies.

The NCT classes (which we did as a weekend) were an expensive waste of time, in that they said nothing that I hadn't read a dozen times over, and the teacher was very poor. And the special addition BF session was on biological nurturing, trusting your instincts etc, which was sod all use to me when it turned out I had no milk supply. Both teachers seems to have been drafted in shortly before the start of the weekend, both came from a long distance away (this was in London, and the BF teacher was from Devon), which meant there was no one there locally to ask for advice from once I'd come home from hospital after an ELCS with breasts that weren't making milk.

Also, our group didn't gel particularly well, and apart from the first couple of months of the babies' lives when there was some contact, drifted apart almost immediately.

I did go to two of the four NHS sessions that were put on by the east London hospital where I gave birth, and it was very much my impression that the other people attending were those who couldn't afford NCT classes. NCT group was all white, UK nationals and middle-class (apart from DH and me), the NHS classes were racially mixed, mostly working-class, a lot of immigrants who spoke comparatively little English. Which was worrying, as I'm sure many had no idea what the very nervous and unused to public speaking midwife who gave the classes was talking about...

This is such a funny thread. If you can't afford NCT membership you can't afford a baby? Really? It's not compulsory, you know: you can actually have a baby without having anything whatsoever to do with the NCT. I had two, in fact.

La leche league meetings are free if you want to learn how to breastfeed. I feel the NCT should give details of other sources of breastfeeding support.

Manchester, yup. I conclude I would have been far better off saving my money. It was my midwife who was very keen I attend NCT classes (it certainly hadn't occurred to me as crucial).

Looking back with hindsight, I think it was because she perceived me as middle-class (though I'm not) attending her clinic in a very working-class area, thought I would be socially isolated after the birth of my son, so she was so forceful about doing the class so that I would make MC friends. Whereas our group was so utterly uninterested in one another that even the bonding experience of having babies at the same time didn't make us manage more than a few half-hearted coffees.

Complain about the NHS not the NCT if its about antenatal support.

You don't need to join the NCT. Its not compulsory. Amazingly people survive without it. I never did antenatal classes. NCT or NHS. I didn't see the point. I found everything I needed online (and whilst you maybe on low income the fact you posted says you have internet access so that's not a barrier to you).

Membership is like joining any other campaign group. Like political parties or Amnesty International. Its a way of raising money for that part of their interest so they can campaign for better public services and policies for those on low income.

At the end of the day someone has to pay for things. I do wonder sometimes about how people think the world works. When you find that money tree be sure to plant a few seeds.

What redToothBrush said. Exactly.

Of course you can manage without joining the NCT - the vast majority of parents do you know. It's an optional thing you can go to / be part of / support if you choose to.

I like the analogy to the political parties tbh. I always vote, but I've never been a member of a political party. They are not mutually exclusive.

That's a shame. My classes were completely no judgemental. They didn't cover bottle feeding, concentrating exclusively on bf as they said that is were the time needed to be spent and where women required support which makes perfect sense. Most birth outcomes covered, teacher didn't care how you had your baby or how you parented it. We have tried to be supportive To eachother since :)

Boy miaow you have issues....

In my area the NCT paid for the training of breastfeeding peer supporters. They run coffee mornings which are open to anyone and are free. They staff a free breastfeeding telephone support line which you can phone at anytime, day or night. Bare mind that you would be waking a fellow mother if you telephone at 3am. There is campaigning and advocacy.

The NCT have improved maternity care through campaigning. I am glad that I did not have a baby in the 1970s when women were forced to have their baby in a nursery and feed to routine for 10 days.

So some parents or parents-to-be are very short of money. Benefits are being cut, large business are using all the strategies they can to pay people as little as they can get away with, childcare costs are very high. Hang on people, the real villains here are the over-charging NCT!

Miaow that is a shame. Mine were fully supportive of every kind of birth and feeding method. In my group we had one home birth, one EMCS, one ELCS, one forceps delivery in theatre, one induction and 2 'normal' births. No one was made to feel like they had failed. We also had a mixture of breast and bottle fed babies. The BF supporter was great at helping to sort out my DD's latch, and also spotted a posterior tongue tie in another of the babies.

My NCT tutor did not see childbirth as pass or fail. She tried to empower people with the latest research so they could make the best decisions for their family. Sometimes a c section or an epidural is the best decision.

I think that NCT classes attract a certain type of high achieving woman who believes she can control every aspect of life through education.

"Did bog all for me apart from foster this whole idea that you can "pass" or "fail" at childbirth and that if you're not wafting around on a cloud of aromatherapy oils you're somehow doing it "wrong". Does fuck all for women who suffer birth trauma does that kind of mentality."

I did suffer birth trauma and PTSD, and that wasn't NCT's fault. It was simply the way things happened. That said, I gave a hell of a lot of feedback and joined the branch team to get the changes I wanted to see in place.

I think I was very unlucky with the teacher. She was an odd, rather ill-at-ease person, who seemed to be hating every minute and was clear that we were poor urban fools at odds with our biology for voluntarily living in London, and was very clear on the slightest medicalisation of your birth leading immediately to the To-Be-Feared Cascade of Intervention. Pain relief was also bad, apart from Tens machines which were OK.

She discussed CS as if it was as likely to happen to us as being on a Mars landing.

Out of the six of us, there were 2 CS, one woman developed eclampsia and almost died, one had a problematic induction and ended up with forceps etc - I think only one person had a birth without some form of intervention, and that was only because it happened so fast she almost gave birth in the lift.

I know several of the others also were left with a bad taste in their mouths about the whole NCT experience, especially when the teacher went up to everyone to ask about their births at a get-together we had a few months after the course (in a way that did suggest a pass/fail agenda, but may have simply been poor social skills).

When I was in the middle of my bf problems, I saw the now former head of Nct on breakfast news. I imagine my interpretation of her comments was through a filter of my own distress and feeling of failure. But she seemed to me to be almost sneering at the idea that a woman couldn't bf. Sian watsername who was interviewing her, tried to challenge this unhelpful judgy nonsense but said former Nct head would not be moved.

My experience seemst to be from a different NCT to some of you!

8 couples in our group. Range from late 20s to early 40s.

No one considering home birth on arrival, so that was covered by "ok, some people do have home births, if you get caught short having not planned one then ring labour ward and 999" . Covered bottle feeding in the same vein, as no one was planning it. Two have ended up completely ff, and a couple are mixed feeding.

We did cover birth centre and consultant unit, pain relief from bouncing on a gym ball to epidurals. All ended up in consultant units as it ended up, with one elcs, two emcs, two forceps, a ventouse, a third degree tear and a "just" episiotomy! We were well prepared for all of them. Somewhere there's a group with all the nvds, but it wasn't us!

The group contained two doctors btw!

They're hitting 6m now, and www all meet up every now and then, usually smaller groups within the big group depending who's free. It'll be interesting to see who stays in touch when we go back to work.

"Some poor people can't even afford 5 pence spread out over 6 months, it's not fair"

Yes, unfortunately life isn't fair. And if you are mega poor there will be plenty of limited opportunities.

NCT offers reduced and means tested rates for classes. What the actual fuck else do you want OP? A massive communist state where we have a race to the bottom and 99% end up as poor as you and 1% lord it up in stolen stator homes?