Breastfeeding support (and antenatal & post natal support) for families in the axe valley was originally under the remit of our local children's centre. They recruited and trained peer supporter volunteers and set up groups; like our original "Breast Friends" group in Axminster. When the children's centre lost funding for breastfeeding support they could no longer run the group in Axminster, so...we applied for a small grant from Axminster Care Services, did some fundraising, and Axminster Baby Cafe was born!

Up until this point the children's centre have still been able to provide us with practical support (in terms of Safeguarding training/DBS checks/insurance), however they can no longer help us with these things... so the time has come for us to take the next step:

We have created an official constituted group: "East Devon Birth, Babies and Beyond". Axminster Baby Cafe, East Devon Sling Library and East Devon Pregnancy and Birth Hub can then all operate under the governance of this umbrella organisation. Our aims will be to continue to facilitate community peer-to-peer support for families through pregnancy, birth and the early years.

Being a constituted group will hopefully enable us to fund raise more effectively, but applying for grants will take time, so to keep us going in the short term we are crowdfunding to cover the immediate costs of insurance and venue hire.

Our volunteers at Axminster Baby Cafe are all passionate that peer-to-peer antenatal and post natal support, including breastfeeding support, should be accessible to all and FREE. We always have a donation pot at the group, but this doesn't even come close to covering our room hire costs (£750 per year) or any update training for our volunteers (approx £200 per year). Until now we have managed to cover this thanks to the generous ongoing support from the local charity Axminster Care Services.

From now on we will have additional yearly costs as we will need to find the money to train any new peer supporters (approx £60 per volunteer) and for our insurance (approx £150 per year).

Axminster Baby Cafe and our quarterly antenatal socials are actually quite unique - currently there are very few similar support groups offering trained breastfeeding support, so families come to us from the villages surrounding Axminster, from Seaton & Honiton and from across the border in Dorset and Somerset.

If you, like us, want to see community, volunteer run groups like Axminster Baby Cafe survive and thrive then please consider donating to our Crowdfunder. Rest assured we will be applying for grants and holding fund raising events because we want to be able to continue to support families in Axminster, and the surrounding towns and villages, for a long time to come.

Thank you for supporting us to help mums, dads, carers and their babies!

Claire, Beth, Anne, Zena, Karen, Rachael and Rebekah.

PS Have a look at our facebook pages: www.facebook.com/axminsterbabycafe and www.facebook.com/eastdevonpregnancyandbirthhub to see what our groups offer