The conception until about 2 years after baby is born is often called the ‘perinatal period’ or ‘the first 1000 days’.
This is a critical time for babies.
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'Baby Coming-You Ready?' artwork has been created by well known Noongar artist Barbara Bynder from Karda Designs
In these first 1000 days babies dream, they hear stories. This dreaming and story telling lays down wiring for baby for healthy strong brains and strong bodies for the rest of life.
Babies are being empowered in a natural way in the womb as the wiring of their tiny brains and bodies grow stronger and stronger through language, culture and identity, through storytelling, music and through good food, nutrition and love.

The Kalyakool Moort - Always Family project (2015-2019), a collaboration between the Aboriginal community and researchers (both Aboriginal and non Aboriginal), explored ways to empower and strengthen Aboriginal mums, dads and families. Through yarning, focus groups and workshops we explored experiences of screening among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and men during pregnancy and after baby is born, and the things that strengthen solid parenting or that may increase distress. Current screening practices the experiences of clinicians involved in perinatal screening were explored also.

We acknowledge the many hours contributed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women, midwives, child health nurses, GPs, Aboriginal Health Workers and other care providers. Their active and committed contributions have resulted in the development of this new and culturally secure approach to supporting new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mums and dads to take control of their journey into parenthood, and to grow strong health happy babies and families.
A new approach to screening and empowering Aboriginal mums and dads is almost here:
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'Baby Coming - You Ready?'
This innovative social and emotional wellbeing assessment 'rubric' emerged from the Kalyakool Moort project. ‘Baby Coming You Ready’ has been designed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men, women and researchers to give control back to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mums and dads in these first 1000 days.

Whilst 'Baby Coming - You Ready?' is also a screening rubric, it does much more:
It supports engagement between the parent and care provider, it provides a support strategy that promotes social and emotional well-being for the parent, the developing infant and family, it is family centered, it is solution focused, it connects them with strong support in Community and most importantly it is 'driven' by the mother or father-to-be. .

'Baby Coming - You Ready uses beautifully created strength-based images that carefully 'translate' the barriers and enablers to strong parenting that were identified in the Kalyakool Moort research and confirmed through a systematic literature review. It is intended to be used on touch screen devices such as an iPad.

Using these culturally safe and relevant images, the care provider and the mother or father-to-be are guided through a shared journey of self-reflection.

The process allows mums and dads to safely explore and reflect on what is important to them.
It allows the care provider to more confidently safely and effectively work alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents during the perinatal period, to identify strengths to be built upon and strategies to overcome barriers to social and emotional health well-being.
Currently National Perinatal Screening Guidelines recommend that all women be screened using the Edinburgh Post Natal Depression Scale (EPDS). Fathers are not screened at all.
The EPDS was developed in Scotland over 40 years ago. Many people believe the language is complicated and frequently not meaningful for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.
'Baby Coming-You Ready?' has been developed to replace the use of the EPDS as a culturally safe and meaningful approach to promoting the social and emotional well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mothers and fathers to be. Check out progress...
Along with the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and families who have made Noongar Boodjar their home, our 'Baby Coming - You Ready?' collaborators include:
We acknowledge that we are working on Whajuk Noongar Boodjar.
We pay respect to all Noongar people and Elders, past and present.