Culturally conscious care; for and by community.
CommUNITY Doulas’ mission is to bring longer-term community care support to new and pregnant parents. Our programming centers the safety and wellbeing of new parents who are under-supported.
The population that we aim to serve experience higher rates of maternal and infant mortality, post-partum depression (related outcomes like suicide), loss of children, either through death or the interference of Children’s Aid Society, and many more poor outcomes across the parenting spectrum. Many new parents and their newborns leave the hospital having sustained months of mental or physical injury from discrimination and mistreatment in and outside of the medical system.
A solution:
Our support systems work to lessen the negative impact of these issues, by providing vulnerable parents with the tools needed to safely survive the postpartum period.
The CommUNITY Doulas Project brings sustained educational, informational, social, and nutritional support to a group of young under-supported parents for 12 months over their pregnancy and post-partum journey.
Our goals are to:
- Prevent the incidence of negative outcomes and experiences prevalent in low-income communities of colour when engaging with the medical system
- Prevent post-partum challenges like depression, burn out and harm to oneself or children,
- Bring families together by increasing safety and alleviating some of the unknown stressors that come with the postpartum period while dealing with poverty.
