First of all we want to wish everyone a wonderful year ahead, full of love, full of connection, full of growth, full of learning, full of laughter, full of life!   2017 has been a busy year and 2018 will likely be just the same which makes us very happy. So here are the stats:

• We now have 401 consultants, 117 of them were trained in 2017. They are spread over 6 continents and are from 20 countries!
• 17 consultants completed their training by receiving enough positive feedback from their customers and by submitting a project that benefited the wider community.
• We trained 55 Peer supporters
• We ran 17 consultancy courses
• We ran 4 CPD (Continuing Professional Development) workshops for free for our existing consultants.
• We had 2 social get-togethers, one of them being a week long camp for our families.
• We had too many interactions on our Facebook group to actually count them!
• We opened our sister branch in New Zealand and they trained 11 consultants!
• We offered over £3000 worth of vouchers for 2018 during our yearly Christmas Competition.

It has been quite a year 🙂 And we are ever so proud to keep working on improving the support we give to our existing consultants and peer supporters. Come on, let 2018 be the year you join us too!

At Slingababy, we do take a lot of pride in how we support our existing consultants. Once the course is completed, the support is delivered in three main areas: a very active Facebook support group, constant growth of the course and Continuing Professional Development (CPD). Explaining how these three key elements work always feel like we’re blowing our own trumpet, and in a world where confidence and arrogance are sometimes confused, it is a step we struggle to make public. So putting our big pants on, we have this blog post for you! The Slingababy Consultants Facebook group is a place that we like to qualify as the best place on the internet. It has nearly 400 members. That is 400 people who have the same passion for supporting families. Questions are always welcome, and the answers bring a new dimension to our learning. We sometimes go on a tangent because both learning, carrying and humans are complex topics that are intertwined in a manner just as complex. Learning and growth are encouraged, whether as an active participant or as a by-stander. The members of this group one day decided to call themselves a family and the term stuck. The Slingababy family is a supportive, encouraging environment. It is a place where falling and making mistakes brings deeper learning, whilst being supported back up by the great hug that is this family. A clip that we recently shared in our group and that, you too, may enjoy summarises this approach.   The Slingababy course is nearly 5 years old! We have been very lucky that we have had the opportunities to allow the course to grow in many directions, to fine tune the content and the delivery. Recently the very first attendee came again to re-sit the course. This is something we not only allow but encourage as we know how one can only learn what one is ready to learn, and this will evolve over time. It was such a proud moment to see from her eyes how far we had travelled down this path. We do encourage our consultants to share what they feel could be improved as well as doing our own reflective practice. Learning and growing are not linear paths, and the three key elements (Facebook group, course and CPD) feed into each other to make Slingababy the truly special experience that it is.   And it brings us to the Continuing Professional Development or CPD that we offer. Once you’ve completed the course, you get invited to attend two weekends a year. That is four workshops for free, every year! The topics are varied. We have covered many subjects: from direct sling use, to updating our teaching practice, to understanding the varied customers and how we can adapt to increase accessibility, to looking at the physical side of carrying for both children and adults, to understanding further about mental health, and also about general business skills. The latest session took place in October and one of our amazing consultants is the Marketing Manager at Ergobaby UK, Amanda Loveday. She came to inspire us and give us some skills towards more effective marketing. We definitely needed this session and this blog post is about trying to make use of these new skills. We learnt about calls to action, so if you liked what you read here, about what we offer, if you would like to look into what we do further, I would like to invite you to check our Facebook reviews to see what our consultants think of their experience, and from there you may check our website too.