Effectiveness evaluation of an antenatal, universally offered, and remotely delivered parenting programme ?Baby Steps? on maternal outcomes: a Born in Bradford?s Better Start (BiBBS) study

Parenthood marks a significant period in new parents’ lives. Whilst it can be a positive experience for many, it can also be a challenging period accompanied by negative experiences – particularly for vulnerable groups of parents. Parents may also experience difficulties with secure attachment and bonding to their child, which is important for children’s development.

Interventions that potentially improve/stabilise parental mental health and improve the quality of family relationships during the perinatal period have the potential to reduce economic burden on society and improve outcomes for children. Baby Steps is one such intervention, which is a relationship-based antenatal and postnatal parent education programme and was developed by the NSPCC.

Born in Bradford’s Better Start (BiBBS) is an interventional birth cohort study, which runs in parallel to Better Start Bradford (BSB) (see https://www.betterstartbradford.org.uk/), and is designed to support the evaluation of the effectiveness of early life interventions (Dickerson et al., 2016), including Baby Steps.

In this study we will investigate the effects of Baby Steps on postnatal outcomes at the parent level, including parent mental health and parent-child sensitivity. We also aim to investigate the feasibility of conducting an economic analysis through routine data. A separate qualitative process evaluation will explore implementation fidelity, and acceptability and feasibility of the intervention.