What is the positive change that has emerged through new collaborations or partnerships during Covid-19 that your project is going to embed?

Covid 19 required Maternity Services to adapt to meet the needs of clients and their families. This included accessing antenatal care, information and support in labour,  supporting new mothers and their families,  and enabling them to access their midwife and appointments.

This also dramatically changed not only our Health Promotion Advice and services, but also the way in which we had to deliver this care and support.  Technology, time, access to care, telephone calls, new clinics, and new ways of working became every day challenges while also facing the fear and impact of lockdown, isolation, shielding and PPE.

Challenges were met through texting, messaging , zoom meetings  and setting up local hubs in clinics – feedback has been good. We continued to provide individualised and personal care, support, appointments and advice to all mums.  All of this was only possible through collaboration and partnership working across primary, secondary and community care.

What does your project aim to achieve?

Provide Teenage Mums to Be, with access to an App to access resources and programs specifically designed for them. Providing an up to date and innovative way for them to interact with Midwifery Services, with access to Health and Wellbeing Programs, information on pregnancy and related issues, utilising technology that they are using on an everyday basis and comfortable interacting with.  Applying a multi-disciplinary approach, pregnant teenagers aged 19yrs or younger will have access the following expertise: teenage pregnancy midwife, smoking cessation midwife, family nurse practitioner, health visitor, Sure Start, Mental Health.

A new Care Pathway will be designed, providing direct access to specific information and resource apps, with the aim of increasing engagement with mums in awareness of messages regarding immunisations, advice and support for antenatal care, mental health, finances and parenting programs, and support in relation to the risks of smoking to both mother and baby during pregnancy.

How will the project be delivered?

The project will apply QI methodology, using the Model for Improvement and an action research cycle.  The pathway, content and accompanying App will be co-produced with with teenage mums and professionals, exploring experiences and needs through appropriate media.  The design of the 6-12wk programme will look at identifying participants suitable for access to the programme and addressing complications of access due to COVID 19 through innovation solutions.

The supporting measurement plan will include:

Quantitative metrics:

teenage mums to be:

identified as smoking in pregnancy

accessing and engaging with Smoking Cessation Midwives/teenage pregnancy midwife

referred/accepted onto or declined to be part of the Family Nurse Partnership

accessed information re pregnancy on other sources

completed online/face to face Getting Ready for Baby Parenting Program

Qualitative metrics:

Reasons why teenage Mums to be do not access support/advice in relation to their pregnancy  i.e. lack of curiosity, embarrassment, boredom, stress, fear, lack of knowledge etc.

How is your project going to share learning?

The programme content, pathway, management policy and accompanying App can all be shared across the Q Community.  This project provides a valuable opportunity to capture data useful to both health professionals and participants which can support needs identification and further service development in line with Teenage Mum To Be needs.  The project will help test the appetite and uptake of information to support pregnancy using an interactive approach, which may be more appealing to teenage mums than more traditional methods of service engagement.  The programme will also provide access to wider sources of information that may help address some of the wider social determinants of health that impact this group i.e. access to information about finance, budgeting, housing etc.

There is a vibrant and engaged Q Network community across Ireland and the UK with which the learning form this project can be shared.