“…Recognising that vulnerable women may be 'hard-toreach' for maternity services, in 2010 the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommended research into the effectiveness of third sector family support on improving outcomes for mothers and babies (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2010). Although volunteer breastfeeding peer support schemes (Dykes, 2005;Muller et al, 2009) and schemes that provide volunteer social and mentoring support to new mothers (Barnes, 2006;Suppiah, 2008) are well established in England, volunteer support for pregnant women is underdeveloped. There has been recent interest from funders in testing volunteer support for disadvantaged pregnant women, with pilot schemes including peer supporters for pregnancy and early parenthood (Bhavani et al, 2015), and volunteer support to improve mothers' mental health (Barlow and Coe, 2012).…”