This year, NCNS was successful in receiving a ClubGRANTS, grant from St Marys Band Club.
ClubGRANTS is a community development funding program coordinated by Penrith City Council and sponsored by local registered clubs. The scheme enables Registered clubs with an annual gaming machine revenue over 1 million to apply 1.85% of this revenue to specific community development and support projects.
NCNS runs the Nepean Young Pregnancy Support Group at the Penrith Women’s Health Centre on Tuesdays between 10am – 12pm. We wanted to use this grant to provide essential items to the young expectant mothers that we work with. This led NCNS Aboriginal Early Childhood Worker, Amy Lear to look into this incredible idea of baby boxes from Tuutu.
The Tuutu Baby Box was created by Finnish women, Susanna Heiskanen and was inspired by the Finnish government maternity package, a box filled with a mattress and newborn necessities, given to all expectant mothers in Finland. Susanna herself, spent her first 6 months sleeping in a Finnish Baby Box.
The Tuutu Baby Box is a great starter kit for parents. The box includes a foam mattress with a waterproof fitted zip cover and an organic fitted sheet. Babies can sleep safely in the box, and the box can be easily moved around from room to room. The lid doubles as a secure change table with the mattress. Included in the box were items we sourced including bibs, singlets, nappies, wipes, brush set, face washers, muslin wrap, a Johnson & Johnson pack plus a little picture book for parents to read to their newborn.
We were able to provide 60 baby boxes in total, gifted to the ladies who attend NYPS and had them delivered to their homes. This project spanned over the year and was well worth the work to see the faces of expectant mums receive their baby boxes. The young women were so excited to receive their box. The project provided young mum’s to be, a safe space for their baby to sleep that could be easily transported, who may not have been able to purchase a cot yet. The great thing about these boxes is that once baby outgrows the box, it can be used to store toys, clothes and mementos.
We are thankful to Penrith City Council and St Marys Band Club for providing the funding for this project through the ClubGRANTS Program, so we could provide these amazing boxes to young mums to be.
If you are pregnant and under 25 years old and looking for support or to meet other young mums to be, we encourage you to come along to NYPS. You are welcome to bring a friend. NYPS has a variety of guest speakers from different services each term such as the Aboriginal Legal Service, CPR Kids, Family Planning, Platform Youth Services, Lifestart plus more. Support Services and WDO’s Available.
If you would like more information about the Nepean Young Pregnancy Support Group, please contact Amy on 0477 004 773 or Sami on 0408 586 797.