Our Plans & Ambitions

We’re a small charity with big ambitions. Our mission is to help babies with serious heart conditions – particularly by improving detection rates during pregnancy and in newborns.

Our vision is that every baby with a serious heart condition has equal access to high-quality prenatal and neonatal services – to ensure their condition is detected as early as is medically possible; that their care begins at the first opportunity; and their family accesses the best possible information and support.

Prenatal detection rates have doubled since Tiny Tickers was launched – and we’re proud of our role in that. But we’d like them to be much higher and more consistent across the UK – at the moment fewer than half of heart defects are detected during pregnancy and, in some regions, the figure is as lower as around 1 in 4 babies.

Our ambitions

We want to give heart babies a better start. So we want:

• Survival rates and long-term quality of life for babies with CHD to improve;
• Prenatal and neonatal detection rates for babies to increase – with prenatal rates reaching a minimum of 75%;
• Every baby with CHD to have equal access to high-quality health care;
• Health professionals working to detect CHD to be appropriately skilled and confident – with access to the training and resources they need;
• NHS decision-makers to work in the best interests of babies with CHD – establishing appropriate service standards and listening to the patient/public voice;
• Every family whose baby is diagnosed with CHD to have access to clear, accurate, and appropriate information and support, when they need it;
• Parents-to-be and new parents/carers to be aware of CHD; the importance of screening; the signs their baby could have a defect; and what to do if they are concerned;
• A better understanding of the causes and treatment of CHD.

Plans for this year and beyond

We’re a growing charity and, every year, we aim to have an even greater impact that the previous year. So, our plans for the current year include:

• Training more sonographers than ever before – we’re aiming for more than 500 per year;
• Reaching tens of thousands of health professionals, parents-to-be, and new mums and dads with our Think 20 and Think Heart awareness campaigns;
• Helping drive improved standards within the NHS through our lobbying and influencing work – including better training provision and support for sonographers;
• Developing new support services for families to help them at a time when they need it most;
• Continuing to place pulse oximetry machines – including in some of the most remote corners of the UK
• Supporting new and innovative academic research projects to improve data collection and our understanding of CHD so we better target our training and information services.

It’s only with the generous backing of our fabulous supporters and wonderful funders that we are able to continue to grow and launch ambition new projects. We can’t thank you enough!