We're a research center that examines how parents and babies make it through the night time — really, what parents do to sort of survive infancy and how they keep their babies safe.

The Lullaby Trust is a charity that focuses on keeping babies safe. So, we're here to give prevention advice and bereavement support. Sheffield Sling Library teach people physically how to put on slings and carriers, how to check that they've done it safely, and give them advice about what to choose that's going to fit them easily.

The Lullaby Trust were concerned about a couple of incidents that have happened where babies have died and were approached to come up with some guidance around safe sling use, and to ensure that parents knew how to let their babies sleep in carriers safely. We really wanted to make sure that there was proper research that looked into the advice so we could bring a number of organizations together and try and get out really clear advice for families.

Durham applied to us actually for the grant. We've worked with them before. We've given them funding before. We know they're experts in this area and they do a fantastic job. We conducted a systematic review first to find out what other people had done and what was in the literature. Then we did a parent survey, so we had over 3,000 respondents, and then we did an appraisal of the information that was out there.

So the event that we're hosting today is part of the ESRC's Festival of Social Science. There are some practitioners, there are some babywearing consultants, there are some parents, there are some infant safety organizations, and we're going to be telling them about the recommendations that we've come up with as a result of this research.

So the key findings here are that we have clear evidence demonstrating the benefits for using adult-worn slings and carriers. We need a single nationwide set of guidance to raise awareness about safe sling and carrier use, to alert parents to the key issues about baby safety, and to direct them to the more specialist sources for tailored information and support.

So you're going to give each little stripe a bit of a tug like that, just to make sure that we've got an exact fit all over his back, because if we tighten the top and the bottom but not the middle, it'll leave space for him to kind of sink down into.

The findings of the research today have been really, really interesting. It just really reinforces that people don't know where to find us. One of the key reasons for working with the Lullaby Trust is to disseminate the information that we found. They have nationwide reach, and every parent receives their safer sleep guidance when they leave hospital with their baby, and we'd like them to receive safer sling use guidance at the same time.

We're a charity, but we work with academics and we work with other charities and the NHS as well. That's the way that we're going to reach families. That's the way that we're going to reach professionals who work with families. So it's absolutely crucial that we have that wide sector of people coming together.

We're very keen to work with any organizations who want to use our research through training courses that we deliver to practitioners and health professionals around infant sleep and infant sleep safety. Or it might be through our Eyes on the Baby project, where we're working with local authorities to train their staff and help them to implement safer sleep for impoverished communities.

The big impact that we hope it will have is that it could save even one baby's life. We want to work with all those organizations and make sure that families get the advice. Predominantly, we want to be putting babies in the safest possible position they can be.