Live webchat with NCT chief executive Belinda Phipps, Thurs 17 Sept, 1-2pm

[GeraldineMumsnet]

We're very pleased to welcome Belinda Phipps for a live webchat this Thursday.

Belinda has posted on threads discussing the NCT, eg this one in April. So we're glad she's coming on for a bit longer tomorrow and can respond to your comments and queries about the NCT.

We're going to send over any questions you've posted by the end of this afternoon for some advance answers, to leave as much time as possible for questions during the live chat.

Hope you can join us.

Thanks for coming on Belinda

I have a few questions:

Do you feel there is a tension between promoting what the NCT/research suggests is 'best' practices (whether this is excl bf for 6 mths, or minimising intervention) and supporting all mothers (& thus minimising the moral hierachies of birth/bf) - how can those tensions ever be resolved?

I'd also be interested in knowing what on-going monitoring occurs once AN/PN teachers & BF councillors are qualified? There seem to be lots of negative experiences on these boards, & a huge variety of experiences with NCT professionals - why do you think this is?

And finally, where do you see the future of the organisation ito the balance between PN, post natal & early years?

Cracking questions deepdarkwood.

at the womama dress. It's sixty quid!!!!!

It's just a flipping wrap dress! Why are NCT selling it, Belinda?

Why thank you

I like the idea of a beautiful ,special dress/nightie to wear for pre/during/post birth and breastfeeding, i thikn women should feel special and nurtured when birthing. BUT £60?? and only up to a size 18

Good questions, ddw, I agree

All specialist workers are supervised and have to do in-service development in order to stay registered. Not sure what it is for ANTs or PNLs, but bf counsellors have to attend (off top of head) two study days a year, have regular, formal supervision, meet locally with colleagues, show a certain level of practice (taking classes and calls throughout the year). Again not speaking for anything but my own specialism, NCT breastfeeding counsellors are not critcised a lot on mumsnet as far as I can see - sometimes, people's expectations of us are too high, maybe, in terms of availability.

llaragub - it's quite normal to have to leave a message on the bf line, and if you had done this I am sure you would have got help sooner...it's better than ringing and ringing and ringing in the hope of an immediate answer. Glad you got help, anyway, on the two occasions you sought it.

From Morningpaper -

... The NCT still emphasises a moral heirachy of birth experiences, where a vaginal birth with no pain relief is seen as the most virtuous outcome. This is greatly damaging for women. The NHS run antenatal classes and avoid this emphasis - but I've got several friends who did NCT classes and were totally unprepared for the element of brutal luck that comes into childbirth. So my first question is: Does the NCT recognise that it is perpetuating a heirachy of birth, and how it is countering the damage that can do to women's self-esteem when they fail to 'get' the birth that they want? ...

That is exactly my concern about the NCT and I wish I could have expressed it so succinctly.

Our NCT ante-natal teacher was definitely of the "nobody needs to have a caesarean if they just learn to breathe properly" school. The NCT prints endless articles in its local and national magazines which twitter on about "Only Wimps and Bad Mothers have pain relief - I had a Proper Birth with nothing but Vivaldi to take my mind off the pain". These do a lot to perpetuate that hierarchy of birth.

So (following on from MP's excellent questions) how does the NCT ensure that the messages sent out by its ante-natal teachers and its publications are supportive of all women and their choices/lack of choices?

I am laughing at that dress A LOT.

"An inspirational, original poem is printed in silver on the inside neck line:
When I finally see your face,
All this waiting will be
A dream we once dreamed
You, a warm weight in my arms
A near and present love"

and my fanny in tatters. Amen.

And blood pouring out of me whenever I move an inch...

deepdarkwood's questions are good. I too would like to know where the NCT is planning to go as an organisation over the next few years in terms of strategy.

Do you have any thoughts on the impending end of Sure Start? Will the NCT be commenting on this, if it goes ahead, or is it not really within your remit? This is something that really worries me a lot - a scheme that was intended to tackle social exclusion in young parents in particular .... (if Sure Start explodes then I think it does increase the moral responsibility on organisations such as the NCT to try to tackle social exclusion where they can...)

I'm obviously bonkers but I quite like the dress (quote felt-tipped out) as a peice of maternity/postnantal wear.
But not to give birth in.

(although dh still wears the t-shirt I wore for 2 births...)

NCT works a lot with individual SureStarts and in Children's Centres - we train staff, we run courses for their clients, we're in breastfeeding and other postnatal groups as facilitators.

Huge amounts of NCT work is done outside 'traditional' NCT paid-for antenatal classes.

NCT specialist workers work with pregnant and new mothers in prisons, with abused women and victims of domestic violence, with refugees...this is not the most obvious part of our work and we want to do more of it, too, where we can. NCT actively seeks contract work of this kind, working alongside existing health and social care professionals or else under their auspices.

I hope Belinda will explain more of what we do.

I have been an NCT member for 2 years I am not middle class I'm not a 1st time mum in my mid thirties and I haven't had a career before having children yet still I'm in the minority when it comes to the NCT membership as a whole which is why so many people see this as a membership for the well to do people!
Please ask your 'younger' members how they feel about the conference etc and get their input into it!
Last years conference was all about being diverse then it finished with canapes and a jazz band ARRGGGHH so middle class!!
So incorporate some youth into it! Reach out to the teenage mums and get them invovled. Offer free courses to the less well off and start being a diverse organisation!!
Also do you cover adoption/fostering in the NCT? It sort of cuts parents out if they've not got natural children as it's called Childbirth Trust.

Thanks for letting me rant on.
I can relax now but would like the diversity issue addressed.

I'm sorry - you've lost me now, rollars.

Since when was a jazz band solely middle class?

What's wrong with canapes? They are just a convenient way of presenting food which people can hold in their hands and stand up while eating. Anywhere you have a large gathering of people you will find food like this. Whatever the predominant class origin of the people there.

Many others have said it already above but I do think the ante-natal classes are still too focused on one ideal outcome. And I would def echo what deepdarkwood said about monitoring ante-natal teachers. Mine was so overwhelmingly biased and was obsessed with squatting as the only way to give birth (though she then breezily dismissed the importance of breast-feeding as that "hadn't worked for her"). She also did a whole session on challenging doctors and midwives which made it seem like a battle would be inevitable.

I would also say that yes, the NCT is a very middle-class organisation but middle-class mums need support too! I now volunteer for my local NCT supporting groups of new mums and many of these women are in a state of total shock, often far away from family (I live in London)and on the verge of PND as a result of reality v expectation with a newborn.

Tiktok - I'm sorry to say this, but I think your rapid demolition of Rollars' suggestions may be part of the NCT's problem. I agree with Rollars that a jazz band is a very middle class entertainment but, even if I'm wrong, it's a very middle-aged one. If you were to ask a group of teenage mums what they would want to round off a conference, I would eat my hat if they said a jazz band!

Much of the NCT's problem, I think, is that it is so dogmatic about what it does and how it does it and seems to have difficulty in adapting or responding to supporters' views or other changes in the wider world. I am sure it's not what you intend, but your response to Rollars seems to exemplify that kind of complacency and unwillingness to countenance a different way of doing things.

Anyway, isn't the point of this thread to post questions for Belinda rather than thrash out the issues between ourselves?

rollars, reduced price course info

www.nct.org.uk/in-your-area/course-finder/course-prices/discount

in addition to Sure Start/Children's Centre, women in prison, asylum seeker courses in various places.

Little Ducks - distributing freebies for parentsin need

www.nctlittleducks.org/

Simialr scheme is run in Nottingham andprob elsewhere.

I am an antenatal teacher and I have just had my first year review, where I was observed for two hours of aclass,having already submitted a full course plan, a detailed class plan, and a piece of reflective work referring to my end of qualification portfolio and showing how I had addressed anything in there and how I respond and reflect upon client feedback.

In addition to that, I have to attend at least two continuing professional development days per year (and there are requirements iwthin that that I update certain skills), build relationships with local health professionals (I sit on a local mat servs committee) and maintain links with the branch in my area and be aware of what is going on.

I will be reviewed again in three years but in the meantime should observe other teachers regularly and allow them to observe me.

On top of that I voluntarily co-ordinate a Bumps and Babies group which attracts up to 30 mums a week. Their feedback ensures I have even more knowledge and udnerstanding of labour, birth and preg in this area - after all it's 12 years ago since I did it and that wasn't even here.

In the great scheme of things, MadBad, the choice of music at a conference (where teenage mums are likely to attend in only small numbers but not, I suggest, because they have seen the conference entertainment programme ) is not a big aspect of NCT's work - but you're right, we can see what Belinda thinks tomorrow

I thought I had given examples of ways in which NCT was not complacent or inflexible, by listing some of the other ways our services are on offer, outside the traditional antenatal course. Complacency is not my experience of NCT - most specialist workers are pretty anxious about meeting their clients' needs and work hard to be flexible enough to do so.

Tiktok - You're doing it again. You're avoiding the issues which I (and Rollars) have raised by dismissing them rather than engaging with them. Of course, the NCT's raison d'etre is not to be an entertainment impresario, but the choice of whether to have a jazz band, a string quartet or a thrash metal band as the conference entertainment does say something about what the NCT sees as its constituency and who it expects to be at conference.

IDriveaRedCar can I wholly concur with your second paragraph.

I'm not dismissing the issues.

I am trying to point out that conference, and the entertainment at it, is a tiny, weeny part of NCT's 'work'. It's irrelevant. Conference is not outreach work at all - it would be mad to try to attract new supporters, volunteers, clients, with the conference. It's a business meeting, on the whole, for existing workers and people already pretty heavily involved. I have never actually been to conference myself!

It's not part of image making, either - what people see on the ground, what they encounter in their own neighbourhoods, what products they see in the catalogue, what they read in newspapers and magazines, what they experience themselves when they make contact with NCT (and thousands and thousands of parents do) - that's infinitely more important than the choice of food and entertainment at one event a year attended by a few hundred.

You seem to see the band as some sort of symbol....I don't. So that's probably why I sounded dismissive, sorry!

Bookmarking - probably can't make the webchat as I will be busy with a toddler and baby at that time tomorrow, but will be coming back to see if some of the most interesting questions raised get a response.

I'm particularly concerned about the likelihood of Children's Centres/Surestart stuff losing funding as national and local government implement cuts budgets, and would love to see the NCT be more of a campaigning organisation.

I've had mixed experience of the NCT but would say the positives make me very glad of the organisation's existence - including a very good postnatal course after I failed to get on to an antenatal course with my first baby, some good nearly new sales, one of my branch's newer breastfeeding counsellors this time around, and some fun local meet ups. I quite like reading the local newsletter too. I live on the poor side of a borough with quite a sharp economic/social class divide but local NCT activity and interest has really come back to life recently - many of those involved including me are quite middle class.

In the past week the Labour Government, along with several other organisations (www.cnbc.com/id/32793527), has proposed scrapping Child Benefit.

Will the NCT be taking a position opposing such a move?

Child Benefit is a universal benefit which is easy to claim and a recognition of the financial sacrifices taken by all families in bringing up children.

Replacing it by a means tested increase in, for example Working Families Tax Credits, would result in a loss in income, not just for higher earners, but also non-tax payers like the unemployed and those with difficulties in negociating the complex process involved with claiming Tax Credits.

We should strongly oppose this as an attack on families and the poor. The government will try to frame it as an attempt to help poorer families at the expense of the well-off middle classes, but this is a sham. They are only interested in cutting expenditure at the expense of anyone who does not stand up to their attacks.

As an ex-branch treasurer, I always felt that our local volunteers were being pressurised from two conflicting directions. The local parents expected lots of events to be provided for them - just so long as they didn't need to volunteer themselves (or indeed turn up to events once organised).
Head Office seemed to see us as a cash cow to be milked for every penny possible.

We never seemed to have any cash left-over for funding local initiatives and support groups, so there was a bit of a vicious cycle, lack of events = lack of members = lack of volunteers = lack of events.

As a result volunteers became quickly disillusioned, didn't hang around for long and left the few diehards trying to do everything.

I second what piprabbit says.

Also, someone else mentioned volunteering but not understanding the organisation. The answer to that as far as NCT is concerned, is to put on training sessions, called foundation training, which are boring and difficult to get to, and not actually attractive at all to volunteers.

Could HO please put together something more accessible? A DVD for volunteers, maybe, which they could watch at home and do the foundation training that way?