Community Corner

Koala North West - Our regular spotlight on a grassroots VCSE organisation in the perinatal mental health sector.

What is the name of your organisation and when did you set up?

Koala North West - we set up in 2020

Where are you based?

Our hub is based in Wirral and we are also based in Ellesmere Port, Neston, Chester & Liverpool.

What services do you offer and who do you support?

We offer a peer support service across Cheshire & Merseyside for parents with a child under the age of 11. Koala North West offer a sleep support service, home visiting family support, breastfeeding support, early years support and respiratory and oral health projects.

What prompted you to set up in the first place?

The lack of parenting support particularly within those early years.

Do you run or plan to develop any services that reflect specific needs within your community?   

Over the past three years we have been reviewing how accessible our services are to dads and partners, particularly those who feel family support is only for the main care giver. We have been able to develop a dads' text service to support dads and partners to be included in the care of their child. We plan to continue to develop our services to make sure it is accessible for all parents and carers. We are hoping to launch a parent / career forum soon to help shape our future services.

What do you find most rewarding about running your organisation?   

Developing our perinatal services and early years offer has been rewarding in itself, to watch the growth over four years. The growth in team, area and infrastructure has meant we are able to reach more families, who have shared that without the support they just don't know where they would be right now.

What have you found to be the benefits of being involved in the Hearts and Minds Community?

The sense of community from sharing ideas with other VCSE organisations, to talking through the challenges. The perinatal focus also has given us space to really connect with other like-minded organisations.

If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice when starting up, what would it be?

Growth will take time. Also that creating a perinatal offer within an organisation is not something that should be done in isolation, it's vital to connect with other services, health and perinatal teams within your area.

What issues do you feel are currently most important to address within our sector? 

Funding - in particular short-term funding. Often within the VCSE community there are such huge expectations to launch a project and achieve full impact in such a short space of time.

Anything you’d like to tell us about your service or organisation? Any recent wins or things to celebrate?

Next year is our 25th anniversary we will be celebrating in style across the whole of 2025. Please keep an eye on our social media as we would love you to get involved.

Thank you to Stephanie Leason for sharing these insights on behalf of Koala North West. You can find out more about the organisation by visiting https://koalanw.co.uk/ or contacting admin@koalanw.co.uk