Pregnancy Basics
Pregnancy Basics
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    • About BASICS
    • For Practitioners
    • For commissioners
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  • Home
  • About BASICS
  • For Practitioners
  • For commissioners
  • Contact

For Commissioners

Pregnancy BASICS gives commissioners a simple, evidence-based way to strengthen parent–infant relationships, identify need early, and generate robust data to evaluate and improve services.

Why Pregnancy BASICS Matters for Commissioners

The parent–infant relationship begins in pregnancy, and the strength of this earliest bond has a lifelong impact on a child’s health, wellbeing, and development. Research now tells us that strong attachment before birth is linked to improved perinatal mental health, better birth outcomes, stronger parent-child attachment post birth, enhanced speech and language outcomes, and ultimately school readiness. Attachment difficulties in this crucial period left unidentified  and unsupported can place greater demand on health and family services later on.


For commissioners, the challenge is now clear: how do we identify relational need during pregnancy, support families effectively, and measure the impact of our interventions, Pregnancy BASICS was developed to meet these challenges. It is the UK’s first antenatal attachment-specific assessment and signposting tool, created to align directly with national priorities including:


  • Family Hubs & Start for Life – ensuring early support for parent–infant relationships.
  • The 1001 Critical Days Agenda – intervening at the earliest stage of child development.
  • NICE Guidance – embedding consistent, evidence-based approaches to perinatal attachment and bonding.
     

By embedding BASICS into services, commissioners gain a reliable, scalable way to strengthen parent–infant relationships at the earliest point, evidence outcomes, and plan services around real community need.

system-Level Benefits

Pregnancy BASICS is more than a practitioner tool — it’s a system-wide solution that helps commissioners deliver on key priorities and improve outcomes for families.

Early Identification & Intervention

BASICS highlights attachment concerns during pregnancy, giving services the chance to act early, provide targeted support, and reduce the need for more intensive interventions later on.

Perinatal Mental Health

By strengthening the parent–infant bond, BASICS supports maternal wellbeing, reduces anxiety, and engages fathers and non-birthing partners in the bonding process.

Speech, Language & Communication Development

BASICS encourages verbal and emotional interaction during pregnancy, laying the foundation for improved early communication and later school readiness

Integration Across Services

The tool can be used consistently across midwifery, health visiting, early help, and family hubs, creating a shared framework that bridges health and family support.

Workforce Development

Practitioners gain a structured, strengths-based framework that improves confidence, enhances supervision, and supports reflective practice across teams.

Evidencing Outcomes

With the Digital Dashboard, commissioners can access real-time data at practitioner, cohort, and service level — making it easier to monitor trends, demonstrate impact, and report outcomes to funders and partners.


By embedding BASICS into antenatal services, commissioners can ensure earlier help for families, stronger parent–infant relationships, and better long-term outcomes for children.

Data & Reporting

The Pregnancy BASICS Digital Dashboard transforms frontline observations into clear, service-level insights. It allows commissioners to see not just individual cases, but trends across teams, cohorts, and whole services. With the dashboard, commissioners can:


  • Track Cohort Progress
    View how attachment scores change across groups of families over time, broken down by trimester, observation area, or service pathway.
  • Compare Across Teams
    See aggregated data from different practitioners, teams or services to identify consistent strengths and where further support may be needed.
  • Evaluate Workforce Confidence
    Analyse practitioner confidence levels and recorded barriers to observation (such as cultural or language differences) to support workforce development and training where it's needed
  • Evidence Service Impact
    Generate reports that demonstrate the outcomes of early intervention and bonding support, providing robust evidence for funders, inspections, and annual reviews.
  • Support Strategic Planning
    Use the data to spot community-wide trends, evaluate the impact of interventions, and inform commissioning decisions about where to target resources.
     

By providing both a real-time view of service delivery and a long-term picture of impact, the Digital Dashboard gives commissioners the evidence they need to plan with confidence, allocate resources effectively, and demonstrate that services are making a measurable difference for families.

Free Toolkit vs Digital Dashboard – A Deeper Comparison

Pregnancy BASICS is available in two formats, both built around the same core framework. While the Free Toolkit helps frontline practitioners get started, the Digital Dashboard provides the service-wide insight that commissioners need to evidence outcomes and plan with confidence.

Free Toolkit - Building Awareness and Consistency

The Free Toolkit provides a simple, paper-based entry point for using BASICS in everyday practice. It includes:


  • Paper-based resource that can be used immediately.
  • Provides structured conversation prompts, observation guidance, and scoring sheets.
  • Helps frontline staff introduce consistent attachment observations into routine practice.
  • A low-barrier way to trial the approach, build staff familiarity, and start embedding BASICS within services.
     

This version is ideal for frontline teams wanting a quick, accessible way to begin using BASICS, introduce structured attachment observations, and support early conversations with families.

Digital Dashboard - Turning Observations into Evidence

The Digital Dashboard is essential for commissioners. It transforms everyday observations into actionable intelligence — helping you measure outcomes, target resources effectively, and evidence the real impact of your services.


  • Ensures consistency across teams, so all families are assessed using the same framework and no parent falls through the gaps.
  • The digital reporting system automatically collates individual assessments into team, cohort, and service-level reports.
  • Tracks attachment trends over time, broken down by trimester, observation area, team or locality.
  • Records practitioner confidence and barriers, supporting workforce reflection and development.
  • Provides commissioner-ready reports for annual reviews, funding bids, and strategic planning.
  • Ensures families identified as needing extra support are clearly visible within cohort data — demonstrating early intervention in action.


Where the Free Toolkit helps practitioners get started, the Digital Dashboard provides a full system-wide solution — supporting families in real time while giving services the insight to plan, improve, and demonstrate outcomes.

Implementation Pathways

Pregnancy BASICS can be introduced flexibly, depending on the needs and priorities of your service. Commissioners can either begin with the Free Toolkit to build awareness, or jump straight into the Digital Dashboard to unlock full reporting and evaluation from day one.

Option 1 – Start with the Free Toolkit

  • Download and use immediately with no set-up required.
  • Gives frontline practitioners a clear framework for conversations and observations.
  • Builds staff confidence and introduces a consistent, strengths-based approach to parent–infant attachment.
  • Ideal for services wanting a low-barrier entry point or to pilot BASICS with a small team before scaling up.

Option 2 – Jump Straight Into the Digital Dashboard

  • Begin with the digital e-form and reporting system from the outset.
  • Ensures consistency across teams so no parent falls through the gaps.
  • Provides commissioners with real-time data at team, cohort, and service level — immediately evidencing outcomes and impact.
  • Supports workforce development with CPD-accredited training and ongoing practitioner/technical support.
  • Advantage: saves time on paper recording, reduces duplication, and gives commissioners early access to the insights needed for planning and evaluation.



Scaling Across Services

Whether you start with the free toolkit or the digital version, BASICS can be scaled easily across midwifery, health visiting, early help, and family hub teams. The tool is simple to embed in routine appointments, supported by training and resources to ensure consistency and confidence across your workforce.

Value for Money

Pregnancy BASICS delivers strong return on investment by helping services act early, target support effectively, and reduce the need for costly interventions later on.


The Digital Dashboard also provides commissioners with the data needed to evidence outcomes, secure funding, and plan services with confidence.


Packages are tailored to your service’s size, needs, and priorities — ensuring you only pay for what’s right for your teams.

Get Started Today

Contact us today to book a demo or request a personalised quote

Register for free toolkit

Frequently Asked Questions for commissioners

Please reach us at catherinecole@pregnancybonding.co.uk if you cannot find an answer to your question.

No - BASICS is the only UK tool designed specifically for assessing and supporting attachment during pregnancy. It complements existing antenatal and postnatal assessments, filling a recognised gap in early intervention.

Minimal - The Free Toolkit includes full guidance so practitioners can start using it immediately. For the Digital Dashboard, short online training modules and ongoing support are provided to ensure smooth adoption.

All digital data is captured securely using GDPR-compliant systems. Commissioners retain control of their data, with access permissions set for practitioners, managers, and commissioners as needed.

BASICS has already been piloted with midwifery, health visiting, and early help teams across the UK. Practitioners report that it strengthens their confidence, improves conversations with parents, and provides clearer pathways to early support. Commissioners value the dashboard reporting, which demonstrates service impact and informs planning.

Yes - The tool is inclusive of mums, dads, and non-birthing partners. It also recognises cultural differences and neurodivergence, with the digital version enabling practitioners to record barriers to observation and reflect this in their confidence scoring.

The Digital Dashboard provides real-time data at practitioner, cohort, and service level. You’ll see trends across attachment areas, confidence levels, and progress over time — giving you robust evidence for annual reviews, funding bids, and strategic decision-making.

Not necessarily - Some teams begin with the Free Toolkit to build awareness and confidence, while others adopt the Digital Dashboard from day one. Commissioners can choose the pathway that best fits their service priorities.

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