Exploring the potential for BiB data to support national funding application for ?Find your village?

Migration to an urban, western environment may challenge families, especially coming from cultures where ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. Parents who feel stressed, isolated and marginalised can experience many difficulties bringing up children in neighbourhoods lacking in resources, which interfere with how children and young people socialise, learn and mature. In contrast, strong, sustainable communities build wellbeing, security and social connections, which improves people’s life chances.

We are developing a national collaboration to apply for national health research funding with the provisional title ‘Find your village’ – culturally-coordinated understanding and action for communities with migrational heritage. This looks to build on examples from across the UK of ‘peer support’ that bring families together during pregnancy and before children start nursery, and enable them to meet their needs. We hope to demonstrate the potential of these ways of working to strengthen children’s language and learning, build confidence and well-being for families, and prevent learning and communication difficulties like autism. These approaches should then improve life chances, benefit families and communities, reduce challenging behaviour, and save money for services. Our intention is to use this evidence to support change in the way services and communities work together.

To prepare our national health research (NIHR) application, we will see if Born in Bradford data adds to the evidence that mothers’ sense of social support or isolation during pregnancy, is linked with their children’s early development and wellbeing. We will explore how these findings may be interconnected with mothers’ experience of migration, stress/distress, and their social & financial situations.