At 20 months, Esther Barnes is strong, happy and healthy. She is pictured here with her mum, Donna, and local GP, Paul Earner.













In July 2003 I gave birth to our beautiful little girl Esther 11 weeks prematurely. Due to her prematurity we spent four months in hospital and Esther required a lot of assistance to develop normally over the first 12 months of her life. It was during these crucial first twelve months of little Esther’s life that we required the help of the wonderful staff at the Northern Rivers Family Care Centre in Lismore.

The Family Care Centre helped our family in so many ways.

Esther had issues with sleeping due to spending so long in hospitals surrounded by noise that when we brought her home we could not get her to settle. After only a week's visit to the FCC Esther was sleeping without any troubles (and so were we!)

Having had such a difficult pregnancy and birth with Esther, my greatest wish was to be able to breastfeed my little baby. It was the only thing to me that I believed I had some control over to make her pregnancy/birth “normal” after everything else had been taken out of my hands. I was beside myself on so many occasions as establishing breastfeeding was a very big hurdle with a tiny little baby who tired easily and a tired and easily frustrated mother who had been expressing milk for five weeks 3 hourly in order to establish a milk supply to make breastfeeding a possibility. In the hospital system it is often easy to be overlooked with limited staff and at times there is no one available to give assistance where it is required. The Family Care Centre provided that assistance to me without the pressure of limited time and made my dream of breastfeeding a reality.

I know that without the help of the Family Care Centre this very important bonding experience of breastfeeding my little girl would not have been a possibility. They had the expertise in the area of assisting premature babies and the ability to comfort and guide a very determined mother - and breastfeed we did until Esther was two!

The support of the social workers as well cannot be overlooked. Many new Mums are so fragile and being able to access a social worker immediately can be a life saver. Having someone to open up to and talk with about your troubles can be very reassuring and with the high incidence of post natal depression, an absolute necessity.

All of these services a mother can access immediately within the FCC. A mother doesn’t have to wait to get assistance, which is crucial considering most mothers would not utilise the services of a social worker if they could not see one immediately.

Without the Family Care Centre, Esther’s first 12 months would have been a lot more difficult at a time when everything is hard enough.

We need to keep the Family Care Centre in Lismore to be able to continue to provide this much needed support to all Mums no matter how big or small they feel their issues with their little ones may be. Having access to the centre also takes the pressure off the already overloaded hospital system.

I had to give birth to our little baby in a strange city, away from my husband and two small children and the support of my extended family because we did not have the facilities in the area to cater for her early arrival. If it wasn’t for the Family Care Centre we would have had to continue to travel to receive the assistance that we were able to get locally for her continuing care.

It is already hard enough on families in the area with limited resources and having the FCC here helps keep families together when they should be together!

Donna Barnes, Alstonville
Mother to Courtney, Imogen and Esther.