Our Vision
We want a fair start for young parents and their babies
We want to change hearts, minds, policy, and practice, so that everyone believes in young parent families, understands the change that’s needed, and is ready to make it happen.
Our Mission
Why Do We Need A Fair Start?
“Many young parents like me have had difficult experiences when we were children, like violence, being separated from our family, mental ill health, not being at school, neglect and abuse. We were often not given the help we needed and, as we grew up, we found it hard to have a safe place to live, enough money to pay the bills, or relationships where we feel loved. This is really stressful, and makes it harder for us to give our babies what they need. This is not our fault, and it’s not fair.”
“As the baby of a young parent, my life chances are worse than for other babies, and that is decided even before I am born. I am more at risk of ill health and harm, even though my parents love me and are doing their best. My basic rights to survive, be healthy, and learn and play are not met, and my needs are often overlooked because there is no special law or policy that makes sure people look after me. This is not my fault, and it’s not fair.”
Our Goals
Our four goals help us achieve our vision:
Explore: We find and use the best evidence to achieve our mission
Practice: We work directly with young parents and their babies to understand what works, to reflect, learn, and add to the evidence base
Share: We share the voices and experiences of young parents and their babies, to build power for change
Change: We influence and create change across the UK wider system
A Model for Change
When the first babies we worked with in the 1990s came back to us, expecting babies of their own, not enough had changed for them. So we learned how to do better.
We learned from our WILD families; their hopes and dreams, and about the challenges they face. And we learned from others who know and care about babies, young parents, families, and how to make change happen.
Our new WILD Model for Change puts the relationship between babies and their young parents at the centre of everything we do. It combines tried and tested methods, with learning from babies and parents, and kindness and understanding about the difficulties faced by many young parent families.
Our WILD Model for Change is our plan of how we need to work to make sure babies and their young parents have a fair start and the beat possible future.
