Baby Squad is a British parenting reality television series produced by Cow & Gate in association with UKTV in which each week a family with parenting problems is given advice on how to solve them by a panel of qualified professionals.
The series premiered in the UK on UKTV on 19 September, 2005. There are 10 half-hour episodes in the series.
Baby Squad premiered in South Africa on e.tv on Wednesday 12 November 2008, at 11h30.
Synopsis
Worried about your child's diet? Fed up with endless sleepless nights? Constant defiance from your little terrors getting you down? Then it's time to call in the Baby Squad!
This practical, parent-empowering series is ready to help you restore health, harmony and happiness to your home.
Presented by former EastEnders star Patsy Palmer, herself a mum of three, Baby Squad is all about how mums and dads can make use of professional to help them use their own instincts to look after their babies.
Baby Squad is different from other parenting shows. Using a unique 'kitchen table network', a small group of mums look at other parents' childcare problems and share some of their own experiences.
They then select practical help from one of the show's three childcare experts: behaviour management consultant Sue Gill; child-care practitioner and maternity nurse Jo Bish; and senior lecturer, health visitor and columnist Dawn Kelly.
Consequently, the show's wide-ranging areas of expertise mean an enormous range of parenting problems can be addressed.
Each episode focuses on a particular problem baby or toddler: in one episode the issue could be a biting toddler; next time, it might be a weaning dilemma.
Following a short video profile of the family, the group of mums around the table offer encouragement before voting on which of the three Baby Squad experts should be sent in to help.
Once selected, the expert visits the family concerned to observe the problem, make a diagnosis and help devise a plan of action.
Then, as we watch, it's time for the family to go it alone for a week before our professional helper returns to see if all their advice has worked.
After four weeks, we pay the family a final visit to see if the changes implemented have now led to a happier, healthier home.