The Network for Improving Quality of Care for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health hosted a webinar on 24 September on ‘Family participatory care in India: partnering with families to care for small and sick newborns’.
Prof. Arti Maria has pioneered this approach in which the parents and close relatives of small and sick newborns are trained in simple care practices and become full partners in care. She explained how the idea started, how changing the attitudes of healthcare workers, who can be weary of sharing some of their power, was the main obstacle to the approach being adopted, and how involving fathers in the care of their newborn proved to be critical.
Dr Harish Kumar presented the scale up model for the family-participatory care approach and how it works both at facility and community levels to change attitudes of health workers, teach parents care practices for their sick and small newborns, and try to ensure a continuum of care once the baby is discharged. He talked about the work in the facilities to implement family-centred care, and how state and national governments were involved at every step.
Dr P.K Prabhakar explained how the family-participatory care approach evolved from an innovation in one tertiary facility to a nation-wide initiative that is about to be implemented in over 800 SNCUs across India.
Listen to a Quality Talks podcast episode with Prof. Arti Maria: Building trust between families and health care workers to care for sick and small newborns in India
