PROJECT
The Baby Box Project
PURPOSE
To provide essential resources to vulnerable first-time mothers
FUNDING
Fundraising plus grants, including £350,000 for 1,400 baby boxes from the North East Combined Authority from September 2024 to August 2025
BACKGROUND
The North East has the fourth highest rate of child poverty in England with around 30% of children currently living in poverty.
In 2020, Newcastle-based charity The Children's Foundation launched its Make A Million fundraising appeal to provide a “baby box” to every vulnerable mother in the region.
A box and contents were developed following consultation with parents, maternity groups and paediatricians and a 50-box pilot for teenage mothers was launched in 2022 with £15,000 funding from Gateshead Council.
More than 1,500 baby boxes have since been delivered across six areas of the North East.
ACTION
Boxes contain toys, books and essentials for daily routines such as changing and sleeping. They are designed along five key principles of early childhood care: love, read, sing, play and count, which were developed at Harvard University in the US.
“The boxes are not full of nappies and wipes,” explains The Children's Foundation chief executive Sean Soulsby. “This is about baby development, maternal wellbeing and bonding from day dot.”
The project is modelled on the universal baby box scheme in Scotland, which delivers boxes to expectant mothers at 32 to 36 weeks of pregnancy.
Under The Children's Foundation scheme, midwives and health visitors refer first-time mothers living in deprived areas, or those with vulnerabilities, such as teenage parents and care leavers.
Each box costs about £230 to produce, and contains toys such as a watering can, to encourage water play in the bath, a music set, stacking rings, and sensory toys. It also contains a baby mattress and sheets, bath towel, sleeping bag, toothbrush, changing mat and a digital thermometer. Boxes are supplied by The British Baby Box company, and packed and delivered free of charge by North East-based warehousing company Stiller.
Boxes, which can double as a cot, are designed to be used without any special knowledge or training.
“For this to work with the general public and at scale, it had to be things that families were doing every day anyway, almost without realising it,” says Soulsby. “We know that just by parents doing simple things, babies’ development can be massively impacted.”
Health visitors have welcomed the boxes because they help facilitate conversations with vulnerable families about their children and can be used as a focus during home visits. They have also saved them money.
“Health visitors were sometimes paying for items which are in the box out of their own pockets and taking them to family homes because the family didn't have them,” says Soulsby. “Now they are finding the most ‘hard-to-engage’ families are engaged, and coming into family hubs for the first time because of the baby box. Health visitors are telling us that they're identifying developmental issues earlier because of the items in the boxes and are therefore able to refer families into other specialist services at an earlier point.”
The Children's Foundation has gone on to launch spin-off events for baby box families, including an oral health programme at family hubs funded by a local integrated care board.
Grants and fundraising have taken the Make a Million campaign to £689,000 of its £1m target so far and by the end of January this year 1,561 boxes had been distributed across Newcastle, Gateshead, North and South Tyneside, Sunderland and Northumberland. Every mother who has been offered a box has accepted the referral.
The Children's Foundation is now providing baby boxes to councils outside of the North East including Richmond, Wandsworth and Hartlepool and there has been interest from several others.
OUTCOME
The Children's Foundation contacts pregnant woman who have been referred to the scheme at 20 weeks to do an initial survey then carries out follow-up surveys 15 weeks and eight months after birth.
More than 150 mothers were surveyed between September 2024 and March 2025. Most – 94% – said they “strongly agreed” or “agreed” that the baby box helped them feel more prepared for their baby's arrival, 92% said it made them more confident as a parent and 86% felt the items in the baby box would save them money.
An evaluation by The Children's Foundation found 70% of boxes were delivered in the 30% most deprived areas in the North East. In South Tyneside, 66% of boxes were delivered to those in the 10% most deprived areas.
An evaluation of the pilot by the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network North East and North Cumbria, found the items that were most used were the pram blanket, thermometer, and changing mat.
A book titled Hello, You was the item that helped mothers to bond with their baby most.
EXPERIENCE: BABY BOX PROJECT GIVES ESTHER REASSURANCE AS A NEW MUM
Esther Barnes, from Blaydon, Gateshead, received her box in September 2023, after being referred to The Baby Box Project scheme by her health visitor because she lived in a qualifying area.
“I thought it would be small – a dummy and some flyers about local services,” says Barnes. “When I opened the front door there was this enormous box – the delivery man had to help me carry it into the hallway – and I cried my eyes out and rang my mum. I couldn't believe the amount of stuff and how generous it was. It felt like someone was looking after me and taking notice of me.”
She says there wasn't anything in the box that wasn't useful and something she would have considered buying herself.
“It is basic, good-quality stuff, and all really self-explanatory,” she adds. “There is a lot of pressure to spend money when you're a new parent. If you search ‘which toothbrush should I get my toddler’ you get options up to £40. With this you have that reassurance that a simple toothbrush is fine – you know it been researched and is science based.”
Her favourite items from the box are a set of books and some stacking cups, which her son Bowen, now 14 months, still uses. She adds that the portable changing mat helped her feel more confident about going out with her newborn. “I would have got one eventually but having it there from the start gave me more confidence to get out and about early without panicking about a lack of baby changing facilities,” she says.
The box contains child development resources, such as a set of 17 NSPCC cards with suggestions for activities to promote child development. “They are activities you might not have thought about, particularly when they are little,” says Esther.
The box also had a copy of the NHS Little Orange Book, which contains information about common childhood illnesses in under-fives.
“It helps you know when to go to a GP. Even though this information is readily available online, having it all in one place is really reassuring,” says Barnes.
She is now working with The Children's Foundation to promote the boxes. “I owe it to them because I am so grateful,” she says.
WHAT'S NEXT?
The Children's Foundation is hoping to work with a university to do a large-scale study on the difference the boxes make to parents of children in the first year of life. It also wants to develop corporate baby box schemes where companies buy boxes for staff as part of maternity or paternity benefits but match that by donating a box to a vulnerable family.
