Wellcome
Rose understood a crucial problem: The German cultural notion of the happy, self-sufficient mother is often far removed from women’s experience after childbirth. The majority of young, urban mothers are alone and overburdened, especially in the first three to four months, without family nearby, community support, or entitlement to official help (which is granted only to sick or teenage mothers).
Rose is changing this scenario on several levels. By franchising her organization, “wellcome,” across Germany, she fills in the gap left by state welfare institutions and strengthens young mothers and families. She equips carefully selected partner organizations within the welfare system with the how-tos to build and coordinate local networks of volunteer caretakers—most are older women with grown children—to help young families during the critical period after childbirth. Rose taps a huge, unused resource with these older mothers, who welcome the opportunity to help their younger counterparts, and are proud to impart their knowledge. She helps the families and significantly lowers the risk of postpartum depression, stress, divorce, and infant health complications. She also improves existing welfare organizations by helping them offer a much-needed service to families in their region. Rose has built extensive networks between the regional wellcome hubs and partnerships with doctors, midwives, and nurses—who are with the mother near the time of childbirth—to spread the word about her service.
Rose is ultimately challenging the perception of motherhood in German society, which implicitly assumes mothers are happy after childbirth and society should not hear from them. Rose teaches that childrearing is a collective societal endeavor, and shows how to assume this responsibility in a way that is rewarding for everyone involved.
About You
Section 1: About You
First Name
Alina
Last Name
Saam
Organization
Wellcome
Country
Germany, HH
Are you an individual between the ages of 18 and 35 who would like to apply for a nine month Young Champions Program mentored by an Ashoka Fellow?
No
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
Wellcome gGmbH
Organization Website
Organization Phone
040 226 229 731
Organization Address
Garstedter Weg 9 · 22453 Hamburg
Organization Country
Germany
Your idea
Name Your Project
Wellcome
Country your work focuses on
Germany, HH
Describe Your Idea
Rose understood a crucial problem: The German cultural notion of the happy, self-sufficient mother is often far removed from women’s experience after childbirth. The majority of young, urban mothers are alone and overburdened, especially in the first three to four months, without family nearby, community support, or entitlement to official help (which is granted only to sick or teenage mothers).
Rose is changing this scenario on several levels. By franchising her organization, “wellcome,” across Germany, she fills in the gap left by state welfare institutions and strengthens young mothers and families. She equips carefully selected partner organizations within the welfare system with the how-tos to build and coordinate local networks of volunteer caretakers—most are older women with grown children—to help young families during the critical period after childbirth. Rose taps a huge, unused resource with these older mothers, who welcome the opportunity to help their younger counterparts, and are proud to impart their knowledge. She helps the families and significantly lowers the risk of postpartum depression, stress, divorce, and infant health complications. She also improves existing welfare organizations by helping them offer a much-needed service to families in their region. Rose has built extensive networks between the regional wellcome hubs and partnerships with doctors, midwives, and nurses—who are with the mother near the time of childbirth—to spread the word about her service.
Rose is ultimately challenging the perception of motherhood in German society, which implicitly assumes mothers are happy after childbirth and society should not hear from them. Rose teaches that childrearing is a collective societal endeavor, and shows how to assume this responsibility in a way that is rewarding for everyone involved.
Website URL
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
When society leaves new mothers alone and overburdened, Rose Volz-Schmidt helps them cope with the chaotic challenges of motherhood in the first months. She has created a broad network of volunteers and professionals to bridge the gap between families and the welfare system, and in doing so is strengthening young families and changing society's attitude towards motherhood.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Yes
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
Rose’s first challenge is to reach young mothers that are reluctant to ask for help. In each community she covers through her franchise, wellcome builds a referral network among professionals to help mothers with childbirth and pre-childbirth coaching. These professionals, including doctors, birth clinics, nurses, and midwives, distribute information about Rose’s organization to mothers after childbirth. They let mothers know that many other “normal” parents—not just delinquents (an immediate prejudice of many parents)—have benefited from wellcome’s support, and present this support as a normal part of early motherhood.
When mothers approach the regional coordinator of Rose’s organization, they are assigned a volunteer from their neighborhood to help them cope with the challenges of motherhood. The volunteer’s role depends on the family’s situation. Sometimes she helps supervise the infant or older siblings, does housework, shops, or when asked, works with the mother to solve early parenting problems by sharing her experience. The volunteer puts the mothers in contact with a range of available services in her neighborhood, including local crèches and childcare facilities. Mothers pay a fee for volunteer services, which ranges from €1 to €4 per hour (depending on the family’s income), and helps to cover wellcome’s operating expenses.
wellcome’s volunteers are primarily older women with older children. They are drawn from a large pool of interested mothers who contact wellcome after having read about it in the newspaper, heard about it by word of mouth, or are approached through the local wellcome franchise network. Volunteers work with one family at a time, and offer an average of six hours of support per week.
More on http://ashoka.org/rvolz-schmidt
Problem
The birth of a child is often happy and momentous, but also a significant life-changing event. Mothers and fathers are often insecure in their new role and need support. A few decades ago—and in some rural areas today—families had access to a network of support during the early, challenging months after childbirth. Extended families and friends supported young mothers by cooking, babysitting, shopping, and generally helping to relieve them from some of their household burdens while they adjusted to their new responsibilities. The increased mobility of young Germans on all economic levels has fundamentally changed this traditional pattern of support. Urban parents are increasingly isolated from their extended families, who may be scattered across the country, with only a small circle of close friends.
German social mores have not adjusted to this reality. Mothers are not expected to reach out to strangers for support during the early months after childbirth. There is a strong cultural expectation that mothers are aglow with maternal bliss and find fulfilment in their unique bond with their child.
Please find more information on http://ashoka.org/rvolz-schmidt
Actions
Rose’s training sessions for volunteers are succinct and she insists on two qualities in her volunteers. First, they must be reliable; young mothers must know they can count on their volunteers at an appointed time. Second, Rose teaches volunteers to enter families as “angels”—present for a short time to do what is needed, as long as needed, and then disappear. She does not want her volunteers to come in as “coaches” or trainers, or as overbearing “grandmothers” or surrogate family members. She understands that young mothers do not need additional complications or to feel inadequate. Most simply need support and encouragement.
Instead of investing a lot of time and money in training her volunteers, Rose has found it more effective to draw a “short line” between volunteers and the local wellcome franchise professional coordinator; this way volunteers can ask for help and support in difficult situations. She also offers volunteer meetings and trainings requested by volunteers. The team coordinators form the heart of each local wellcome chapter.
Please find more information on http://ashoka.org/rvolz-schmidt
Results
December 2007 marked a key turning point for Wellcome. In one week in Germany, five infants had been killed or died of neglect, and there was public uproar about parental abuse and neglect. In response, Chancellor Merkel issued a public endorsement of Rose and wellcome’s work, which Merkel presented as a way to detect early parental problems and help young parents avoid violence and neglect. After this endorsement, Rose seized the initiative and approached regional health ministries throughout the country for funding. Many of these ministries had previously given her informal encouragement, but now began giving money. This money is enabling her to fund the trainers who will greatly expand wellcome’s capacity. Her current operating budget is €300,000 per year, but she would like to grow to €500,000 within the next year.
At the moment there are 138 wellcome-teams in 14 German counties. In 2009 over 130 volunteers assisted more than 1600 families in whole Germany.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
In future, Rose will use the networks she has built to deliver more services to young parents. She is now running a pilot project in Hamburg that targets “problem families”—identified by doctors or the social welfare system—and approaches them in a positive way. Her referral system gives vouchers for a “birthday fairy”—families can call and “order” a fairy (a social worker trained in early child development) who visits the family on the child’s first birthday. The volunteer arrives with a gift for both the mother and child, and begins to build trust. The “fairy” offers to help the mother with any child-rearing problems she has and quickly takes stock of the domestic situation to determine if serious domestic problems need to be addressed. The program is designed to target “at-risk” children—early intervention being very consequential.
Rose would like to offer more extensive childcare by linking parents who can occasionally attend to each other's children. When Rose has expanded wellcome’s support network throughout the country, she will begin to deepen their range its services.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
Since Wellcome can train only a limited number of new coordinators per year, Rose is creating an intermediate level of trainers nationwide for Wellcome to delegate much of the coordinator training. These trainers will enable Wellcome to quickly process more new applications, and expand faster throughout the country. At present, Wellcome has trained seventy coordinators in twelve of the German states, and there exist correspondingly seventy local franchisees with 700 volunteers—reaching 1,000 families a year.
In 2006 an academic study was conducted to assess the effects of her work. It examined twenty-five mothers who received support from Wellcome alongside a control group that received no support. The difference was substantial: In Rose’s group, women’s self-reported well-being was higher, and rates of postpartum depression were lower.
How many people will your project serve annually?
1001‐10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$1000 - 4000
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for more than 5 years
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
No
If yes, provide organization name.
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Yes
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with government?
No
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
Approximately 150 words left (1200 characters).
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
Approximately 300 words left (2400 characters).
The Story
What was the defining moment that you led to this innovation?
Rose was born to a large family in a village of 600 people in the Black Forest. Her family had lived in the village since 1650, but neither she nor any of her five siblings stayed to make a life there. All moved to cities in different parts of the country, and left the supportive umbrella of the family and the village neighbourhood behind.
When Rose’s first daughter was born, her husband was busy at work, and her family was 600 kilometres away. Rose felt alone and afraid. Though she had eagerly anticipated her daughter’s birth and was a professional social worker specializing in child care, she found the early months of motherhood more difficult than she expected. There had been plenty of support before and during childbirth, but now there was none.
Rose has worked in family education for many years, and has started all sorts of innovative new approaches. She founded a support group for fathers—the first of its kind in Germany—to help educate them about how to contribute to early child-rearing. Eventually, she felt the program should be managed by a man, and found a male successor. She also founded a day care network to bring parents together to coordinate a system of mutual caretaking: Parents supervised each others’ children for certain amounts of time and helped overburdened mothers. Having been through early motherhood, she knew there was a huge gap in the welfare system that leaves mothers and families alone during the critical time after childbirth. Rose founded wellcome in 2002. Wellcome won a social venture competition, which earned consulting support from McKinsey. She describes this as a crucial period, when she began to think more ambitiously about systems change.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
See questions above or on http://ashoka.org/rvolz-schmidt
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Through another organization or company
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
Ashoka
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