Moving Mums is an initiative from Kirklees Active Leisure launched in August 2021 which seeks to encourage and attract pregnant women and new mums to remain active across its sites by creating a specific programme that brough all their pre & post-natal offerings together.
Why was Moving Mums first created?
Local health partners reached out to us to ask if we could provide a prenatal and/or postnatal exercise service for Kirklees, and we knew there was a need for specialist exercise and support, for pregnant women and new mums in the area.
We already offered safe ways for new mums to exercise, but it wasn't promoted or packaged up as a pre/postnatal offering. In creating a programme that interlinked all the activities for this user group that we offer as we have for Moving Mums, we’ve been able to reach a greater number of people and support them on their journeys to becoming new parents.
We know all women have different needs during and after their pregnancy, so we aimed to show how all our members from beginners to advanced could access a variety of activities to help them stay active and healthy.
How important is it that exercise and activity is made as suitable as possible by organisations like yours?
We’re aware that even though the Chief Medical Officer’s advice for pregnant women is that they maintain their activity levels throughout pregnancy, lots of activity providers don’t feel confident in recommending activities that pregnant women can suitably participate in.
This can lead to frustration and confusion for both the women looking for suitable activities and the staff members who want to support them.
We also see that this uncertainty and inconsistency can often lead to women giving up looking for potential physical activity provision.
Therefore when looking at this particular audience of pregnant women and new mums it’s so important that we’re able to give really clear recommendations on the types of activities that we offer that are suitable for them to participate in, and that’s exactly what Moving Mums aims to do.
When we conducted surveys with our members, we found that three quarters of users were looking for services that were specifically tailored to pregnant women or new mums so we knew how important it was that we were really clear with our marketing that we had created something specific for them.
For us there was also great commercial value too because it meant that we were able to retain members during a period where these women may otherwise have frozen or cancelled their memberships due to lack of suitable offers.
What would you say to other people thinking of starting their own group or changing something in their local areas?
Ensure you have clear promotional plans in place to get the information of your facilities and sessions out to women; promotion has been challenging for us because it’s a very specific market, and it's often unclear as to which of our members are new mums or pregnant.
As a result, we’ve used targeted social media ads to try and tailor our messaging to reach new mums that might be interested in the programme.