Our values
More about us
Our core values
At CalmFamily we are guided at all times by our core values. We do not just have these here for a branding exercise. We use them to guide how we structure session, how we approach conversation, and to make big and small organisational decisions.
All people deserve empathy and kindness. We support all parents, embracing their choices, their background, their family structure and understanding them as individuals. We also feel it’s vital to empathise with the babies and children that we are discussing. We work constantly to further our knowledge, so that we can help parents to gain a better understanding of their children and make choices from a place of empathy.
When we discuss parenting, we base our information on evidence. The information we provide comes from relevant and up-to-date research, reviewed by professionals from relevant backgrounds. This means that you can be confident that the information you gain here will inform and support your choices.
Furthermore, we measure the outcomes of our classes, gathering and acting on feedback to ensure that parents can trust that our classes work to make them feel more informed, more empowered and more calm.
All parents have an innate, inspiring power, of which most are unaware. A parent’s relationship with their child shapes that child’s mind and development, and so, their future.
At CalmFamily, we provide education and support to help parents recognise and embrace that most powerful parent-child relationship. Parents are the experts when it comes to their family. No-one at CalmFamily positions themselves as ‘experts,’ other than in regard to their own family. We simply provide information and tools and support parents to make their own choices, to support calmer relationships. We never want parents to feel they have to follow someone else’s programme or “parenting rules”.
Every family is unique, and only that family knows what they need, and what choices are right for them. Parents make the choices; we offer information so their choices are informed. Parents decide how to live their lives; we offer a range of tools and techniques they can use.
We believe strongly in the balance of needs and power in the parenting relationship. We aim for all parties in a relationship to lead happier and calmer lives. In this society, children’s rights and needs are often unintentionally overlooked. “Parenting literature’ focuses on meeting the parents’ needs. This is due to the pressures of our society and a lack of education about child development. We strive to support parents to understand their children more fully and to operate in a largely consent-based, equal relationship with their children.
When we understand the needs of both parents and children we can find balanced ways to meet them both. This is fundamental to calmer relationships and calmer families.
Our education and support is about offering opportunities for parents to define and strive for excellence, not for perfection. In trying to achieve perfection, parents do themselves and their family harm. They set themselves up for failure, defeat and resignation, rather than improvement, recognition of mistakes, and continual growth. Families choose their own goals, and are supported to devise their own strategies to meet their individual needs.
Furthermore, it is essential that the education and support that we provide, the services we offer and the products that we recommend are all of the highest possible standard. We don’t settle for anything that doesn’t provide parents with a calmer and happier life.
Integrity is ingrained in everything we do. Whenever we make a decision, we consider how that decision affects our values and most particularly our ethics. Our ethical position is to “at least do the minimum harm possible, and where possible, improve the situation”. This includes two vital policies we call “conscious consumerism” and “sustainable development”.
You can read more on these below.
We do not purchase from, associate with, or give time or money to, unethical companies. Examples include:
- We actively boycott Nestle due to their unethical practices across a range of issues, including infant formula promotion, water restriction, and child labour.
- We boycott The Baby Show and other events associated with Clarion due to their ties to the arms trade.
- We have not sought accreditation, though we exceed the educational standard, from the Royal College of Midwives, due to our concerns over their alliances with human milk substitute manufacturers, Bounty, Johnson and Johnson and Slimming World. The arrangements with these companies pose the risk of biased research, recommendations and unethical promotions that may influence vulnerable people.
When we buy, including products that we sell, we seek to ensure that we are buying lower impact products, from ethical organisations. We do not sell or hire products from unethical companies. Where products are our own, we seek to ensure that all elements are ethically sourced. We do not knowingly recommend professionals or organisations that are not ethical, or inclusive.
We believe in collaboration. When we work with others, we partner with those who share our ethics, in addition to our shared mission and goals. Our partnerships with Slingababy, Mamaruga, Cuski, Sling school, and TotsBots are born from ethical compatibility. Each of these organisations consciously work towards inclusivity, lower negative impact, as well as seeking calmer lives for families.
We seek out ways of working that challenge capitalist consumerism, including caring for the needs of families primarily. Examples of this include:
- Children are welcome in our spaces.
- Inclusivity is explicit here.
- Working for CalmFamily is truly flexible, allowing for family, neurology, and mental health.
- Our goals are centred on wellbeing, not productivity.
- We will use future funds and time to campaign for wider changes in policy and law.
We develop our organisation in a way that works for our community.
We aim to give more to society than we take; as a social enterprise, profits are reinvested, and invested in the community through social projects and campaigning for change.
We ensure our growth is at a rate that is functional and sustainable.
We reduce waste and energy use and increase efficiency as much as possible to reduce our impact on the planet.
CalmFamily actively seek out ways to make our community representative of the diversity in the world, offering opportunities to those often not represented. We understand (and continue to improve our understanding) of our current deficiencies and seek to overcome them.
We aim to give more to society than we take; as a social enterprise, profits are reinvested, and invested in the community through social projects and campaigning for change.
We ensure that every CalmFamily leader has a basic understanding of diversity and inclusivity, and is clear that we are all on a learning journey. We know that the most important thing we can do is listen to the experiences of people directly affected by these issues. We continue to seek out education from diverse sources to improve our knowledge and understanding as directors, and throughout the CalmFamily community.
We seek to make our community, our training, and all our services as accessible as possible to all people. This means offering learning materials in multiple formats, offering support with affordability on a global and situational basis, taking into account neurodivergence, and different family situations, and specifically offering services to people who are otherwise less catered for. There are many more ways that we try to be accessible, so if you are ver struggling to access our community or services, please contact us and we will work with you to improve.
Our people are always more important than our productivity. As human beings we know that energy and focus fluctuates, and wellness creates better outcomes for everyone. We focus on working in a way that supports personal and collective well-being.
As a community, we are a collective of families, as well as a large extended family. Those individual families are all a part of this movement, and as such, we include them in our considerations of protecting the community and meeting needs.
We ensure that everyone in CalmFamily spaces, either virtually or in-person is safe physically and emotionally. We put appropriate boundaries in place, and do not tolerate intolerance. All CalmFamily leaders are trained to create supportive and nurturing environments.
Information safety and protection is essential to human wellness. We will protect people’s right to keep their information safe and private at all times. We never sell people’s information, or share it beyond what is needed to complete our role. There is more information about this in our privacy policy, linked below.
