East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust has officially launched the HOPE Room, a specialised room intended to support mothers and babies facing potential legal separation at birth. Designed by Natalie Woodruff and Louise Slater from ELHT, and in partnership with one of our amazing HOPE Mothers, the room provides a private and confidential space for women and their babies prior to separation.
The HOPE Room is the next stage in improving compassionate and trauma-informed care for families facing care proceedings close to birth. Following the principles laid out by the Born Into Care Guidelines, the HOPE room helps ensure that families are offered privacy and a non-clinical space at this very difficult time. The room may also be sued for remote court hearings if the mother chooses not to attend in person. It also aims to provide a supportive and private space for parents to meet with lawyers, social workers or other professionals and a space to be with their babies before separation.
“I am so pleased and honoured to have been involved in the production of the very first HOPE room. I just wish I would have had been able to have access to a room like this when my baby was born.
The HOPE room will offer mothers at risk of separation a space where they can be offered, go through and use the HOPE boxes as they are intended. Helping the mother keep connection with her baby, write hers and her baby’s birth story, giving her a safe place to cope with the stress, reduce the trauma and, by reading the letter we the HOPE mothers have sent, know that she is not alone.”
– HOPE Mother
It is our HOPE that this room will be the first of many, and that more services will establish safe, sensitive, spaces to support mothers and families facing potential legal separation at birth.