"Unite and Netmums to provide parenting support" - Were Mumsnet asked ?

[Gameboy]

Just saw this:
"The Unite/Community Practitioners' and Health Visitors' Association and mothers' social networking website Netmums have been given £500,000 by the Department for Children, Schools and Families to provide joint support to people with parenting problems.

A team of health visitors will help mothers who come online with problems such as postnatal depression, parenting and relationship issues, anxiety, self-harm, and alcohol abuse.

If the problems are too serious, the health visitors will offer one-to-one counselling on a "closed" area of a site and/or recommend that the women see a health professional in person."

I'm just being nosey really, but I wondered if Mumsnet was asked if it was interested in doing this?

Wow - that's a lot of dosh to do something they (and we) are already doing innit?

Erm no we didn't ask - you have to apply for government grants generally and we didn't know anything about it, so we didn't. Not sure whether we would have done so tbh if we'd known about it - we might have had to be very earnest or something...

Do feel really poor now though - just think of the improvements to the shed we could have made!

Yes - soudns like a lot of ££, but it will include some costs of employing HVs etc I suspect and setting up extra parts of the site if they have a 'closed' area.

Still a bit for you though....

I didn't realise there really was a NetMums! I bet none of it comes off tho, esp if it means spending mooney.

OTOH, considering the slating HVs tend to get here on MN, do we really think they can do a better job of advising than we can?

nah, don't fix up the shed. Don't want Tech getting ideas above his station.

it must be more dept of health grants, like the breastfeeding support one which was announced a couple of weeks ago. they're all following the 'every child matters' outlines (with which i am not familiar).

i shouldn't think netmums will be getting anything like 1/3rd of it, they are merely hosting and providing access to target group, not actually delivering the service. also this £500k may be over 3 years.

well, based on the HV who missed my PND and the ones you read about on here , whose first response to a breast feeding issue is to tell a mother to offer formula, i reckon it was a lucky escape!

although £500 000 would have been nice ... we could have had breastfeeding counsellors and everyhitng..

Don't forget the health visitor who said my husband must be violent because he was so calm.

oh - and when told my husband was from Kenya, proceeded to tell us all about her trips to India. PMSL!!

AND asked us if our having ds1 hair cut was "a cultural thing".
er no love, it was in his eyes.

she is worth £500 000 of governemnt money!

my new HV is so fab, i shall miss her when DD starts school

I would have ocme out of retirement for £500,000. In fact I would come out of retirement for a humble £100,000 (and share of profits and my own bench in the shed).

I am a bargain.

Just found the press release:

UNITE/CPHVA JOINS WITH NETMUMS TO HELP TROUBLED MUMS
ON THE INTERNET

Unite/Community Practitioners? and Health Visitors? Association and Netmums ? the UK largest social networking site for mothers ? have joined forces to help up to 50,000 mothers a year with parenting problems on the internet.

Netmums has received £500,000 from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to explore new ways of delivering support services to parents ? and Unite/CPHVA is working with Netmums on this internet project.

A team of dedicated health visitors will be helping mothers who come ?on line? with problems such as postnatal depression; parenting and relationship issues; anxiety; self harm; and alcohol abuse. It is hoped that mothers will pick up tips for good practice in the internet discussions.

Should the problems be too serious, the health visitors will offer one-to-one counselling on a ?closed? area of a site and/or recommend that the women see a health professional in person.

Unite/CPHVA?s Acting Lead Professional Officer, Cheryll Adams said: ?This is a ?first? for the UK and it is great that the country?s largest professional body for health visitors and community nurses is joining forces with one of the country?s largest ?consumer champions? for mums.?

?In the sophisticated 24/7 internet age, we do need to find innovative ways to communicate with parents and Netmums has been a trailblazer in this respect.?

It is expected that the scheme ? due to start this spring ? and also involving Contact a Family; ACE; Parentline Plus; Women?s Aid; and One Plus One will provide expert advice to some 50,000 mothers in its first year. The grant runs till March, 2009.

Sally Russell, co-founder of Netmums said: ?Every week we are dealing with a terrifying number of mums that simply aren?t receiving the support that they need. This grant not only recognises the power of social networking as a means of reaching out to those that need help, it also engages those that have slipped through the bureaucratic net.?

Netmums is the largest parenting website in the UK and has more than 750,000 users every month.

_

How many users a month does MN have Justine?

ahem - the UK's largest social networking site for mothers - not according to independent stats!

goodness me i'm shocked now!

We have 400 000 monthly visitors and according to Hitwise Netmums has considerably less .

go for some sort of funding...lottery grants for example??

not sure how a website that accepts sponsorhsip from nestle can be expected to offer bias free advice about infant feeding

Well I think its all very good and all that and if it provides another portal for people to get the help they need then great.

And I am heartily glad that Mumsnet haven't done it. I think it would irrevocably change the nature of the site. And I expect they will have a devil of a job accvunting for the expenditure and number crunching to prvve value for money.

But they are much more earnest than MN.
And probably less full of rucks...

£500,000?

Biggest website?

Nestle sponsored?

Tsk, tsk....

Very about this. Firstly it is very of them to 'massage' the figures for their pitch/pr and secondly I think it is probably a risk that they are taking.

And as for mn, probably a lucky near miss, I suspect that this would change the very nature of mn if it was implemented here, ie it could well corrupt the very thing that makes mn the most popular parenting website in the UK.

We pwn NetMums in all 3 stats here

I'm a fundraiser - this money will come with all sorts of 'strings' attached. Targets to be reached, evidence to be collected and evaluated. i imagine that it will have an impact on the 'feel' of the site.

To be honest - having spent my life trying to deliver projects funded by government agencies - you are probably best out of it.

It is very rare for any project to achieve 'full cost recovery;. Suspect netmums will rue the day.

Hope that cheers you up!

Thanks mcnoodle - that's exactly what we need to hear. And besides there's nothing wrong with the shed that a lick of paint won't fix...

Personally, I'm glad MN isn't being taken over by HV's.
I mean what are they seriously going to do better than what we do here already?

"A team of health visitors will help mothers who come online with problems such as postnatal depression, parenting and relationship issues, anxiety, self-harm, and alcohol abuse."

Ok, we help these people too, as a community there is always someone who has been through the same, and always people with relevant, upt-o-date information, plus we aren't tied to anyone or anything so can be 100% honest in our approaches.

As for
"If the problems are too serious, the health visitors will offer one-to-one counselling on a "closed" area of a site and/or recommend that the women see a health professional in person"

I think the 'closed area' of the site is a really really bad idea. What if the HV gives bad advice? At least on a normal thread if bad advice is given it will be challenged, also I think that every thread I have ever read when someone has asked for help has given phone numbers/websites etc of the right person/people to go about it, so they can stick their money up their bum AFAIC. MN doesn't need it, we are best as we are.

fuck me - are they really sponsored by Nestle?