The Multiple Births Foundation (MBF) was founded in 1988 as a charity dedicated to supporting families with twins triplets or more by working with healthcare and other professionals to develop services and educating and training programmes to meet the special needs of the families. Since the 1970s the number of multiple births in the UK has doubled with 12 592 sets of twins born in 2011. This is due to medical advances in the management of complex pregnancies; increased survival rates of pre-term babies; and an increase in women having children when they are older and so more likely to have twins and infertility treatment.
Multiple pregnancies are high risk for mothers and babies with infant mortality and disability rates both significantly higher than for single babies. From the outset the practical emotional and financial demands of parenting even healthy babies compound the need for targeted information and professional expertise to prevent and/or cope with common longer term problems such as low birth weight and pre-term babies maternal depression and children with language delay or more serious disability. Some are faced with especially complicated bereavement when one baby survives but another does not.
This project is an innovative approach to producing an over-arching framework which gives evidence based information about the specialist support required by these families; the current services provided; what needs to be commissioned to meet these needs; and finally how the education and training for professionals should be provided through higher education institutions (HEIs) and with programmes for continuing professional development.
