Infant Feeding
– (including Baby Friendly Initiative, Food Crisis Pathways, Cow’s milk allergy management, breastfeeding strategy and specialist infant feeding services)
As a system, we are working towards the national target of all maternity services being fully Baby Friendly Accredited by March 2024. One of our local units is Gold reaccredited and all other units are receiving BFI support in their journeys to accreditation. We are also supporting our neonatal services, health visiting services, family centres’ services and universities to become Baby Friendly Initiative Accredited.
There is a well-established, supportive infant feeding network across Lancashire and South Cumbria, who aim to standardise knowledge and training and care pathways across the whole system so that women, babies and their families receive the same high standard of care wherever they are.
The Lancashire and South Cumbria Infant Feeding Network have developed and on an ongoing basis deliver standardised training packages for staff and students in various roles, who may come into contact with pregnant women and their infants into childhood. These standardised packages continue to be developed so that staff in related services are also trained in basic infant feeding principles. Each Trust develops annual update training based on new evidence, in response to new needs or risks, or to support an improvement in areas of knowledge identified during regular audits of staff and women.
There is a suite of system-wide infant feeding policy and guidelines already ratified and implemented, with a second iteration which includes additional guidelines imminent. Bitesize infographs and supporting information are continually developed to help staff understand changes to the policy and guidelines in small sections.
The network also develops resources for service users to support them to consider their options and to raise their awareness of services. This was particularly evident in their crisis response during COVID-19.
- Our two development areas for this year are:
working to influence and contribute to the development of local authorities’ Food Crisis Pathways in all localities to ensure inclusion of infant feeding - supporting newly qualified Lactation Consultants to embed their learning into practice, developing a system-wide approach to delivering rapid access clinics and daily triage services.
