"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?

"We have 400 000 monthly visitors" erm, does that count the 27 times i login in the course of a normal day?

pmsl at the idea of having health visitors on hand. Just imagine the conversations....

OP - 'my lo has only gained 3 oz this week - should I be worried?'

HV - 'well, yes, we really look for 8 oz, you need to give them some formula asap otherwise they will wither away and die....'

Tiktok/Hunker - 'Nooooooooooo'.....

Yes you will have to rethink your privacy policy of you take up outside resources like this. They'll want to collate all sorts of information on members.

And the problem is that you invest so much into delivering this kind of project that, when the money runs out, you feel as though you need to keep the work going. The reality is that, unless government continue to fund, no grant funder will touch it. And given that gov priorities change every blardy week, it is unlikely that they would fund beyond the lifetime of the initial grant. In 3 years time, landing on Mars will be priority - not mothers.

Pah to netmums, health visitors and the DCSF

Message withdrawn

I think you're right pruners. But how scary to have a 'closed' area with HVs peddling their advice....and no means of checking it or even knowing what they're saying....

It might be a really fun past-time testing said HV's on netmums though

VS I totally agree - having HV's lurking and ready to pounce might really put some people off posting. What next - social workers poking around ready to 'intervene'.

lol VS

Totally agree that it's a nice, worthy idea, and it might help some people, but I'm glad too that it's not on MN.

To the shed!

Does anyone ever go over there (Netmums), lurk, corral a posse and then pounce? Like at school, when a neighbouring school were rumoured to be turning up with baseball bats and knives and all, on Friday? Mind you, they never did turn up, did they?

Maybe they're here, lurking now.

definitely not a bad thing

independence is priceless, absolutely priceless

I've not got anything against NetMums but it's run and organised differently to us.
Would we honestly want Mn to be Government-sponsored...
I think, as others have said, we are far better placed as the antithesis

I've been on netmums, there is a poster who knows tons about VBAC's and had a VBA3C herelf who gave me a lot of good info.
I saw her here once but she got pounced on for having a differing opinion and haven't seen her post since.

Oooh I've just read this.

I wonder how they got a grant for such a core operating cost when they are surely a profit-making organisation? Or do they not make a profit ... ? Hmmm interesting eh?

BAh at that press release - 'trailblazing' how exactly? They haven't done anything (apart from this grant) that noone else has done.

But still, I'm glad it wasn't MN.

It's the kind of thing that suits netmums, but wouldn't suit here.

CAn you imagine the furore if Justine popped up adn said, 'By the way we now have a govt grant, and incidently we now have to od this, this and this'.

Dear god it would last years.

There was enough uproar when profile apges were introduced.

lol @ the very idea of Health Visitors coming on

Netmums are a non profit organisation. It used to be run entirely by volunteers, but now I beleive they give site editors and the people who run the sites minimum wage.

I used to be an editor, but left as at the time editors were not paid and I could not afford not to go back to work, running the site took a lot of time.

I could not have survived without netmums, Mumsnet is great, but when I had my children what I needed was something local. I don't agree with all of how the organisation has changed but the people who first set up the site and who run it like Sally amd Siobhan are genuine people whos main aim is to help others not go therough the lonliness and isolation that they (and I) did.

Ahhh I didn't realise they were a NPO, blimey

i think MN are well out of it, anyone i know who's got a govt grant for anything now spends as much time re-applying every year than doing their actual job. and the hoops they have to jump through, god it's grim.
good luck to Netmums, they seem a very differently organised/targeted site from here, the users also (unless i'm very much mistaken) take advice from authority etc well so HVs will fit in rather better there than here. and they're sponsored by Nestle... erk.

Re: Nestle

I fell out with them big time over this, but it was not sponsorship, just an advertising banner (as if that makes it any better) but it is now over I think it lasted for 7 months. At the time I was told it was take the money or stop running, costs were too high and other sources of incomehad dried up.

yes i remember, that was when we purloined you, island.

i don't really understand why nestle were the only people prepared to advertise with them at the time, though.

are you sure it didn't change to The Nestle COffee Room or something? i thought it was more than a banner when i looked.

The coffee house had a huge Nescafe decaf or something banner on the top. The wording made it sound like netmums were endorsing them.

A very sad time, I miss my old ed friends a lot but can never go back as I posted things publicly that I shouldn't have.