We are a not-for-profit Community Project run by founder and volunteer Natasha Jones and supported by her husband, Karl. Our aim is to offer these life saving skills to as many parents, grandparents and carers of infants and babies as possible.
"We can muddle through sterilising bottles, nappies and weaning. But if your baby stops breathing, you really need to know exactly what to do"In 2010 my husband and I had a baby girl, Ava-Mai. At 11 weeks old she suffered an event known as a "near miss cot death". It happened in the middle of the day and we didn't understand why it was happening. We phoned for an ambulance and waited for it to arrive. The ambulance took a painstaking 36 minutes to arrive and Ava stopped breathing on several ocassions during the wait and it was Natasha's instincts that kept Ava going until the ambulance arrived.
Once the professional medics arrived we knew that Ava stood the best possible chance of survival. Following some time in the Intensive Care Unit at Southampton General Hospital, Ava began to improve and after a few days, had made a complete recovery.
With reflection, those 36 minutes waiting for the ambulance were terrible and we felt it is wrong that baby and infant resuscitation training are not compulsory elements in post or pre natal care. We want to right that wrong and so began Baby Resuscitation offering training to parents, grandparents and carers of infants and babies these essential skills.
We liase with venues to allow us to use their space for the best possible fee (waived on ocassion) to hold our courses. Once we have a venue confirmed we begin to spread the word as much as possible and advertise (usually at our own cost) the course to attract attendees.
We have developed a good working relationship with many resuscitation professionals who we can hire to train attendees. This means that we know what our costs are going to be and have a target attendance level in order to cover the costs of holding the course. Our target is more than 15 people each paying £15. On ocassion we have not been able to reach our target attendance and so have made up the shortfall ourselves or through sponsorship.
As we are not a business, we do not have to worry about profit and loss, we aim to break even. Our main objective is to train as many people as possible, we know that people we have trained on our courses have used the techniques they learned to save their babies lives which is what Baby Resuscitation is most focussed on, saving the lives of the most vulnerable members of society.
