Transforming services for young mothers and their babies

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Child and Youth Health

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The Child and Youth Workstream aims to improve the mental and physical health of children and young people in Canterbury through their life course from before birth to the transition to adulthood.

The workstream provides leadership for the development and provision of health and social services for children and young people. This includes agreeing outcomes and performance indicators for healthcare for children and young people, prioritising service development activity to meet national response and local imperatives, recommending transformation service improvement and identifying areas requiring redesign, innovation and evaluation.

The Child and Youth Workstream comprises of a core group, a child subgroup and a youth subgroup. Established in 2012, it is a key point of integration between health, justice, education and social services with membership from across these perspectives and links with other Canterbury Clinical Network Workstreams and Service Level Alliances, as well as the South Island Alliance's Workstream covering child and young person's health.

Transforming services for young mothers and their babies

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Young mothers and their babies will benefit from work to transform health and social services to be even more integrated and coordinated.

Nicola Austin, Chair of the Child and Youth Workstream said mothers under 19 years are a particularly vulnerable group in our community.

“The Canterbury Health System is working to ensure that services for pregnant women, babies, children and families are high quality and meeting the needs of those that are vulnerable and at risk.

“We want to look closely at what we wrap around these young mothers to support them from early in pregnancy through the birth and care of their babies as they grow.”

As part of this work, a workshop was held at the Design Lab on 31 March to look at how current services could be enhanced to improve the outcomes for young mums and their babies.

Participants from across health, education, the NGO sector, Māori and Pacific providers, the New Zealand College of Midwives and the Ministry of Social Development came together to discuss what is already working well and where improvements can be made.

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