Collaborative working in health and social care: Lessons learned from post-hoc preliminary findings of a young families' pregnancy to age 2 project in South Wales, United Kingdom.

Children of young and socially disadvantaged parents are more likely to experience adverse outcomes. In response to this, a unique young families' project in Swansea, UK, was created, which drew together a team of multi-agency professionals, to support people aged 16-24 from 17 weeks of pregnancy throughout 1,001 days of the child's life. The aim of the JIGSO (the Welsh word for Jigsaw) project is for young people to reach their potential as parents and to break the cycle of health and social inequality.

Coping and help in birth: An investigation into 'normal' childbirth as described by new mothers and their attending midwives.

Objective: to investigate how 'normal' childbirth is described by new mothers and their attending midwives.

Design: a qualitative, reflexive, narrative study was used to explore birth stories using in-depth, un-structured interviews.

Setting: 21 new mothers and their 16 attending midwives were recruited from the locality surrounding a district general hospital in South Wales, United Kingdom (UK).

'Normal', 'natural', 'good' or 'good-enough' birth: examining the concepts.

In the face of increasing intervention in childbirth, 'normal birth' is currently being promoted by the World Health Organization, national governments, professional bodies and other organisations throughout the world. This paper takes a postmodernist stance and explores the idea of the 'normal' before going on to analyse normal childbirth, referring to concepts of the normal and the natural. It refers to historical developments in childbearing and lay organisations along with research relating to women's views of childbirth, to question the appropriateness of using 'normal' to describe the very individual experiences of childbirth.