Letter IBCICC January 2018

Dear Members of the IBCICC Forum,

First and foremost, thank you for having joined this group, where the purpose is to discuss and learn from each other how we may gain a stronger medical and societal recognition of the importance of babywearing and the role of consultants. One potential way to achieve this could be through creating accredited certification scheme(s) for babywearing consultancy, if there is sufficient support in the international babywearing community.

This post is a little long, but we ask you to pause and grab of cup of tea or coffee and read it through to the end. Future posts will be much shorter. Please have patience with this one long post. We have also posted this post as a PDF-file for easier reading.

If you wish to read this and any other future posts in your own language, you may use the Facebook function “See translation” at the end of the post and you will get a rough translation of the text.

Wenn Sie diese und andere zukünftige Beiträge in Ihrer eigenen Sprache lesen möchten, können Sie die Facebook-Funktion "Siehe Übersetzung" am Ende des Posts verwenden und damit eine grobe Übersetzung des Textes erhalten.

Si vous souhaitez lire ceci et tout les autres messages futurs dans votre propre langue, vous pouvez utiliser la fonction Facebook "Voir la traduction" à la fin du post et vous obtiendrez une traduction approximative du texte.

Si desea leer esta y otras publicaciones futuras en su propio idioma, puede usar la función de Facebook "Ver traducción" al final de la publicación y obtendrá una traducción aproximada del texto.

Se desideri leggere questo e altri post futuri nella tua lingua, puoi utilizzare la funzione Facebook "Vedi traduzione" alla fine del post e otterrai una traduzione approssimativa del testo.

Who is a part of this group?

In this group, the task force has attempted to gather all the leaders of the international babywearing community. You are all either:

• Babywearing school owners or faculty

• Leaders of babywearing consultant associations

• Prominent conference organizers.

  If you know of someone within these three categories, who is not yet a member of the IBCICC Forum, do let us know. We will include them at our discretion. We are attempting to maintain a positive and workable group.

Our Mea Culpa:

We are painfully aware that our communications, since the formation of this FB group in 2015, have been rather sporadic. Additionally, we recognize that the forum has not been managed very well. With your help, we hope to do better in the coming year(s). We endeavor to make this forum relevant for you in your personal thought processes about the future of babywearing consultancy.

Our upcoming plans for 2018:

In the coming weeks we will be posting “Frequently Asked Questions” to provide you with information about the background rationale for:

• Why the international babywearing community might consider accredited certification

• The accreditation process and core definitions, related to accredited certification

• Thoughts on the potential impact of accredited certification on babywearing education, consultancy and reaching more parents.

  We also hope to meet all of you in real life at various events and conferences throughout 2018. The IBCICC task force members are committed to participating in as many events as we can so that we will have the opportunity to learn, share, discuss and process with each other in person.

  A little history:

  Before we move forward, we ask you to indulge us as we attempt to explain how, as a task group, our learning process has evolved since the announcement of the first IBCICC meeting in Antwerp in 2015.

  The original idea of creating an initiative to investigate whether the international babywearing community, through collaborative efforts, would adopt an international accredited certification model, came from a small group of US and Northern European babywearing educators.

  When announcing the first IBCICC meeting in Antwerp, we tried to invite all known leaders of schools or associations, and subsequently approx. 25 educators and association leaders participated. Our hope was to engage the international babywearing community in a completely open and transparent democratic process. Please see this link for the first announcement of the IBCICC meeting:https://www.facebook.com/groups/1550496905188638/permalink/15629877 83939550/

  The Antwerp meeting was probably the first organized meeting and discussion of common babywearing themes in an international forum of babywearing school leaders and consultant association leaders.

The concerns we uncovered:

At the Antwerp meeting and in the time following, we learned of a broad range of concerns associated with a potential international accredited certification model. To name just a few:

• Will the cultural differences between countries and continents not be too great to create one single international certification model?

• Will an international certification scheme superimpose ideas and practices on schools and consultants that run against culturally and professionally relevant experiences, developed over many years?

• Or put differently: As a school owner, I have spent years creating the best possible babywearing education – why should I conform to some potentially less precise certification model, which does not match exactly my personal priorities and philosophy?

• Will it inadvertently create an unhealthy standardization and homogenization of babywearing education, which will hinder babywearing schools in pursuing their own philosophies and approaches?

• Will it mean a shift of influence away from the grassroots to some remote unresponsive international office on another continent?

• Will it incur heavy costs on the individual consultant or babywearing school, without any measurable benefit to the consultant, nor to their clients?

• Will the theoretical or practical knowledge required for certification be prohibitively difficult, effectively shutting out many current consultants from continuing their work?

• Will it bar non-medically trained babywearing consultants from practicing their work?

• Will it create division, rather than collaboration in the babywearing communities, through a potentially “elitist” certification model?

• And many other valid concerns.

  The Babybjorn Forum for babywearing leaders in October 2016 perhaps constituted the next international open debate meeting. Interestingly, we understand that the Babybjorn 2016 Forum concluded that babywearing consultancy needs greater medical recognition and external validation.

  So where do we in the task force stand now?

  Subsequent to the Babybjorn 2016 Forum, we in the task force have received feedback from many babywearing community leaders that there is an increased interest to discuss accredited certification of some sort. This has inspired us to renew our engagement.

  We have also included in the task force a “devil’s advocate”, babywearing consultant and IBCLC Alenka Benedik, who is on the board of directors of the European Lactation Consultant Association. Alenka has extensive experience with different international certification models and a good eye for the challenges and advantages of different certification and organization models.

Founding task force member Miluška Floreen-van Eekelen has returned to the task force. In the interim period, Miluška has developed several nationally accredited courses for perinatal medical professionals about early childhood related topics, including babywearing.

We recently included babywearing consultant Angélica de la Cruz from Mexico. She has a strong record in organizing educational activities and consultants, as well as being a peer-to-peer babywearing supporter, and will bring important perspectives from Central and South America to our work.

Using an analogy from the perinatal medical world, we see our role in this process of potentially assisting the creation of some sort of accredited certification model as the role of a midwife. Just as it is not the midwife who delivers the child, but merely acts as an assistant, in a similar fashion, we in the task force cannot “deliver” an accredited certification scheme. Only the babywearing community can. Your views and opinions regarding how we best proceed (or don’t!) are just as important as our views.

If there is little to no interest from the international babywearing community to collaborate to create accredited certification for babywearing, we will take that to heart and put the project to rest.

Potential paths forward:

For those who have fundamental concerns with the idea of one single universal international test for all consultants, no matter where in the world they live and work, we acknowledge that there are different and well-functioning models of accredited certification models and international collaboration within the perinatal medical field, with varying degrees of international test standardization and national/regional autonomy regarding curricula and specific modes of testing.

Two examples are the midwifery and lactation consultant professions. Both of these professions have adopted accredited certification models. Both are organized in national, regional and international organizations. Where they differ is how they have chosen to test their practitioners, in order to certify them.

The International Board Certified Lactation Consultants (IBCLC) all take the exact same exam, no matter their country of origin. One international credentialing institute accredits the IBCLC exam.

The midwives take national exams, which are accredited by national credentialing agencies (normally a higher education government board).
This means that each country has to go through its own individual accreditation process. However, even though it is the national midwifery organizations that decide on the exact content and modes of testing, they are still restricted by having to live up to the requirements of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) guidelines. These are primarily the ICM Essential Competencies for Basic Midwifery Practice and the framework of the ICM Global Standards for Midwifery Education.

Please note that both of these professions have adopted accredited certification models. There are therefore many similarities in their approach.

This is where you come in:

There are advantages and drawbacks associated with each of the different certification models. We in the task force have no preference for either one of these models. We hope to explore collaboratively – with you – which of the models makes most sense for the babywearing community.

We hope to have a productive and manageable discussion here in the IBCICC Forum on how we in the babywearing community may proceed. We believe that the next steps forward are to:

• Clearly explain what is in fact accredited certification and our views on the contextual factors in the perinatal medical community that support accredited certification

• Discuss, amongst all of us, the pros and cons of creating an accredited certification model for babywearing professionals

• If the vast majority of us are in agreement with the idea of creating an accredited certification for babywearing we can discuss whether this accredited certification model will be based on a national, regional or international model.

  Rationale for initially attempting to define an international model:

  It could be argued that until we have tried to see if there might be international agreement on the test content and testing modes we truly do not know whether the national or regional (Africa/Americas/Asia/Australia/Europe) differences are too great to warrant an international certification model. With testing mode, we mean how the testing is in fact done: Practical examinations of skills, theoretical examinations, essays, yes/no, multiple choice, etc.

  Once we have attempted to find international agreement on the job analysis, exam content and testing modes, we will have a clearer path forward. With sufficient agreement, we can pursue an international certification model. If too little agreement, we will have to pursue national certification models, similar to the midwifery certification model.

  If achieving sufficient international agreement fails for us as a professional community, the task force believes that through this examination, the international babywearing community will at least understand where we fundamentally differ, and we will have expanded our horizons on what babywearing consultancy may mean in different parts of the world.

  Perhaps even more importantly, we will all have gained a greater understanding of the possible and necessary uniqueness of our individual national approaches. Just like it requires having actually lived in another country to be truly aware of one’s own culture, this process could also serve the purpose of clarifying for ourselves our own individual babywearing consultancy cultures.

What we ask of you:

We want you to engage in this open process with us. For you to engage in such an open process, you need to have fundamental faith in that we in the task force do not have some kind of favorite model or “hidden agenda.” We can only say here that we don’t have an a priori favorite model.

Trust is a two-way street, and it is earned. We cannot do anything but ask you to engage now, and then see if you think the process is managed well and if we in the task force demonstrate sufficient humility and professionalism when we make the inevitable mistakes that will come. We are all (and that certainly includes the task force members) stepping into relatively unknown territory and have much to learn. With so many interests, cultures, languages, strong personalities and backgrounds, there are bound to be some bumps on the way, plus we are all human.

Addressing some basic potential misunderstandings:

The intention with any accredited certification model that might arise through the discussions in the IBCICC Forum is not to create a new school or an international education franchise, which will compete with the existing schools.

On the contrary, it should lead to an expansion of the potential market for the existing babywearing schools. We believe that there will many more medical professionals wanting to train as babywearing consultants, once they realize that they are joining an accredited certification scheme, which is recognized by the surrounding perinatal medical associations.

Furthermore, the market for continuing education of the consultants (a requirement to keep the certificate) will also grow and create opportunities for many new and diverse course approaches to babywearing.

An accredited certification model will not interfere with or attempt to dictate how a babywearing school should teach babywearing consultancy or what topics should be included. These decisions rest entirely upon the individual babywearing school leaders and their professional interests and philosophies.

At its core, any accredited certification model is an exam, based on a job analysis, which leads to certification, by adhering to the standards of the credentialing institution, which grants the accreditation.

Please note, that at this formative stage, the international babywearing community has complete freedom to define the exam(s)’s content and related requirements, such as clinical experience and also how theoretical knowledge and practical skills are tested.

In principle, how an applicant (consultant wishing to sit for an exam) gains the necessary knowledge and skills to pass the exam is more or less beyond the scope of an accredited certification model. Depending on how we in the babywearing community choose to define our rules, the applicant is free to pursue whichever pathway and education she or he may prefer, in preparing for the exam.

Our vision:

We hope to begin here in this forum a dignified and worthwhile debate about how we as a community can elevate the medical and societal understanding of the benefits of babywearing. Hopefully, we will ultimately succeed in making babywearing consultancy a paid profession and career pathway for those consultants who want to base their livelihood on their passion for babywearing.

We furthermore hope that this debate and exchange of viewpoints will also take place through personal meetings in the year(s) to come. We do not have a set timeline for when this debate has come to its conclusion. We simply have trust in the process. And in you. ☺

The overall activity plan for 2018

• Clarification on what is accredited certification through the posting of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) and definitions of core accredited certification concepts. The FAQ’s and the core definitions for accredited certification will be kept in a pinned post, so you can access them any time, once we have completed the step by step introduction of the Frequently Asked Questions.

• IBCICC Forum members’ feedback on accredited certification for babywearing

• If sufficient positive feedback, moderated discussion in the IBCICC Forum of the potential contents of the job analysis, that forms the foundation for creating the exam(s) that will lead to certification.

  What is expected of you as a member of the IBCICC Forum?

• That you spend the time and energy to understand what an accredited certification scheme is and the few different international models for accredited certification and professional organisation.

• Once you have understood what accredited certification is, that you clearly voice any fundamental objections you have against accredited certification for babywearing consultancy, so it can be discussed in the forum. If there are only objections and no support coming from the international babywearing community, we in the task force will abort the project.

• If you do agree with the potential usefulness of an accredited certification scheme, that you participate in the creation/discussion of the potential content of the job analysis and, subsequently, the exam that leads to accredited certification.

• That you participate in the discussion of which type of accreditation model might be most suitable (international, regional (EU, USA, Asia, etc.), national).

  Thank you for taking the time to read and digest this letter. We hope your tea /coffee was enjoyable. ☺ We look forward to getting to know you better.L