Favourite phone counselling service for parents, Halo Beba, is getting a new mobile application

Belgrade, 29 December 2020 - Favourite telephone counselling service for parents, Halo Beba, received a new mobile application, an interactive guide to parenting and early development, with a range of content and a new learning experience for parents. Through the Halo Beba - Your Parenting Companion application, parents will receive updated and personalised content related to monitoring the growth and development of the child at an early age, breastfeeding, nutrition, immunisation, planning medical appointments, ideas to encourage development through play, conversation, reading with children, answers to parental concerns and many other topics. The information and advice are based on the latest global knowledge about child development, and UNICEF's eminent consultants have adapted it for parents in Serbia.

UNICEF in Serbia developed the application in partnership with the City Institute for Public Health and the Nordeus company, and the UNICEF Regional Office will, based on an upgrade with multiple languages, enable its use in countries in the region. The mobile app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store.

"I am proud that we are launching the Halo Beba mobile application, a solution designed to help parents make informed decisions about their children and to support them in their daily routines. The application was created as a result of partnership of Nordeus, the Belgrade City Institute for Public Health and UNICEF. It is available 24/7, which is especially important in these challenging times. We are giving it to parents in Serbia as a New Year’s gift to support them and provide equal opportunities for every child," said Deyana Kostadinova, UNICEF Representative in Serbia.

Nordeus has been a strategic partner of UNICEF for more than six years.

"When we realised that a large number of parents call the Halo Beba service for advice that can be solved with simple information, which takes up time that could be used to support more serious concerns of parents, we realised that this challenge could be easily solved with a digital product. A group of parents from several Nordeus teams worked together with the Belgrade City Institute for Public Health and UNICEF to identify and better understand the needs of parents of young children, our future users, and to consider the technical requirements for setting up an appropriate digital platform. We helped combine all this knowledge into an early mobile application prototype that was used as a starting point for its further development. We also provided the necessary financing," said Miloš Paunović, Corporate Social Responsibility Specialist at Nordeus.

Parents will continue to be able to call the Halo Beba counselling centre by phone and get answers to all questions related to the first years of the baby's life from the home visiting nurses who are employed with this service. The Halo Beba telephone counselling centre was opened in 2001 owing to the full technical and logistical support of UNICEF, and since 2007 it has been fully funded by the City of Belgrade.

"Telephone counselling centre Halo Beba is a service of which we are especially proud. The City of Belgrade has supported the operation of this counselling centre since its inception in 2001, with the support of UNICEF. This service is now a permanent item in the City budget. Halo Beba telephone counselling centre and Halo Beba application are part of the concept of Belgrade as a 'smart city' - a city that facilitates solutions to the needs of its citizens. We will continue to listen to the needs and requests of parents, to improve the existing and to develop new, fast and smart services, especially in these challenging times when parents need support more than ever,” said Prof. Dr. Zoran Radojičić, Mayor of Belgrade.

The Halo Beba counselling centre is run by the Belgrade City Institute for Public Health, which continuously improves the quality of maternal and child health care in Belgrade and Serbia through greater openness of the health service to the family and the community.

"This application represents another step forward for the Halo Beba counselling centre, primarily in terms of the availability of important information to parents at all times. In this way, we all provide great support to young parents in a period of great need, and work on achieving our common goal, good health and wellbeing of the youngest and their families through support, love, safe and enabling environment," pointed out Prof. Dr. Dušanka Matijević, Director of the Belgrade City Institute for Public Health.