Neonatal Therapy Service (NTS)

In Development

The Neonatal Therapy Service (NTS) is a team of professionals who provide early intervention for babies and their families. Contact email: CTM.Neonataltherapyservice@wales.nhs.uk

The aims of the service are:

To provide babies and families with holistic early intervention.

To empower parents to provide the best possible start for their babies.

To promote parent-infant relationships, early child development and parent-infant wellbeing.

To be responsive to families throughout the first 2 years of the baby’s life.

Meet the team joining a baby and family on their journey:

Further Information

Correcting for age

You baby’s development is measured from their corrected age, that is from the date they were due, not from the day they were born. It is important to correct for your baby’s prematurity to give an accurate assessment of their developmental abilities. We do this because babies’ brains grow and develop according to a pre-programmed biological sequence and also in response to their experiences. When a baby is born early, their brain and the rest of their neurological system are yet to develop and mature to the same degree as a baby born at term.

For example, if your baby had a gestational age of 28 weeks at birth, their brain and the rest of their neurological system would need a full 12 weeks of growth before we would expect them to function as a newborn born at term. Therefore, the developmental expectations of a premature baby are based on corrected age, rather than chronological (actual) age. We generally make this correction until children are 2 years (corrected age) because, by this time, most premature babies have ‘caught up’ and there is little or no difference noted from a baby born at term.

Additional resources/links:

Support for parents and families of premature or sick babies: www.bliss.org.uk

How does my newborn baby communicate? (Brazelton): https://www.brazelton.co.uk/parents/your-babys-language/#

Learning what your newborn Is Saying (Brazelton): https://www.brazelton.co.uk/parents/babysvoice/

Listening to your baby's voice (Brazelton): https://www.brazelton.co.uk/parents/babycaretopics/

Safe sleep: The Lullaby Trust - Safer sleep for babies, Support for families

Bathing your baby: Bathing your baby | NCT

A framework to give babies the best start in life: https://eismart.co.uk/

Neonatal Therapy Service (NTS)

Meet the team joining a baby and family on their journey:

Further Information

Correcting for age

Additional resources/links:

Books

Leaflets

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