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!

That confirms something I'd always suspected Chocolate Wombat. As I said above, our NHS ante-natal group, (though not quite as "yummy mummy" and flat out wealthy as our NCT group), was strikingly differerent from the local demographic norm, and stuffed full of married white graduate professionals.

The NCT have done good work campaigning for improvements in childbirth and so on, but I do agree with the 'middle-class' comments and this is due to what I've seen of the NCT locally. I didn't do classes or join, although I'm the kind of tofu-knitting home-birthing mc (by education) person who you might expect to.

A friend did the classes, and met a bunch of similar company-Beemer-driving white women she could bond with and go on spa days with, which I think she found helpful as she'd moved to a new area and didn't know anyone locally with kids. I imagine if you'd signed up for that particular class on a discount due to low income, you'd have struggled to keep up with your new friends afterwards, going to out-of-town soft play, swimming and cappuccinos and affording the aforementioned spa day and so on.

Another friend invited me along to an NCT nearly-new sale while I was pregnant, and I found the whole thing a bit mind-boggling. The sale was sponsored by a washing powder manufacturer and organised with military precision with everything logged on computers and packaged and labelled. You could even pay with chip and pin, which I found odd for a charity sale as chip and pin is often prohibitively expensive for a charity to run. I was used to cheap and cheerful run-your-own-stall sales and brought cash expecting it to be the only option! My friend mentioned that many of the volunteers could only stay for the first hour due to childcare issues having nabbed the best items for themselves first.

I bought some breast pads and nursing bras from the NCT website (in the sale) and couldn't help noticing all the fancy organic cotton and extortionate bednest type stuff on offer - more John Lewis than Primark, definitely.

I live in an area where the charity FAB (Families and Babies) operate and they actually send in breastfeeding supporters to the hospital to visit each new mother (if you want them to!) and had some home visits that really helped too, all free of charge. They also run coffee mornings with breastfeeding support, and support themselves with charity shops that sell very cheap baby clothes and equipment. They seem much more accessible and user-friendly to me. The NCT are famously pro breastfeeding but only seem to offer support round here to those that have attended the classes.

So these are just my experiences, which have led me to feel that, yes, the NCT is an enclave for a certain type of person, and I'm sure they don't intend for people on a low income or lower level of education to feel excluded from their services, but maybe they need to do something to change that perception?

Furthermore, I'd say that Mumsnet has a greater media presence and political clout than the NCT on parenting matters now. That's my two cents!

"Another friend invited me along to an NCT nearly-new sale while I was pregnant, and I found the whole thing a bit mind-boggling. The sale was sponsored by a washing powder manufacturer and organised with military precision with everything logged on computers and packaged and labelled. You could even pay with chip and pin, which I found odd for a charity sale as chip and pin is often prohibitively expensive for a charity to run. I was used to cheap and cheerful run-your-own-stall sales and brought cash expecting it to be the only option! My friend mentioned that many of the volunteers could only stay for the first hour due to childcare issues having nabbed the best items for themselves first."

Persil/Comfort no longer sponsor the sales.

As an NNS co-ordinator I can tell you that costs are kept to the bare minimum and chip-and-pin machines are rented for the sale (the bigger the sale, the more machines they probably have but it's up to the branch) I'm not sure I can give out how much they actually cost but for our branch our takings make it more than worth it and generally sales will ask for a small donation (~50p) to cover the cost of renting the machines. In 3 sales I've had one person kick off about that - fine, don't pay the donation.

We do organise them with military precision because we have to. My branch takes up to 120 sellers with up to 70 items each and we can generally expect to receive 400 buyers through the door (not including those the volunteer pre-sale). Anything else would be absolute chaos, we'd be inundated with complaints, people wouldn't make a return trip and the contribution from the sale to the branch would be compromised.

As to the point about volunteers - please bear in mind that most sales will have around 100 volunteers over the course of setting up, running the sale and clearing up afterwards and the co-ordinators will have spent literally months before and after the sale sorting it all out. My second child is due shortly before our next sale, meaning I'm having to basically take NNS maternity leave, and by god do I feel guilty about it.

No one gets any incentive to do this other than a bit of cake, a cup of tea and the chance to attend the pre-sale which, to be quite frank, is not excessive in order to thank people for giving up their time. People whinge on, and on, and on about volunteers allegedly getting all the best bits - yet all they need to do is volunteer themselves to help for a couple of hours to get access to the presale. Hell, you can come to our presale if you've made a cake we can sell at the cafe; we're not talking strenuous commitment.

I'd love to have our sale fully computerised - god knows it'd make my life easier when calculating the commissions to each seller - but real life gets in the way.

I think the course prices are steep. I've been quoted £342 for 4 days (2 Saturdays and 2 Sundays). I would expect the charge to be symbolic.