Borough’s health visitors achieve UN award for baby friendly support services

The heath visitor service, which is commissioned by Wandsworth Children’s Services in partnership with Public Health and delivered by Central London Community Healthcare (CLCH), supports families in Wandsworth and has now achieved stage 2 accreditation of the initiative, in recognition of its excellent support for babies and their parents.

The Baby Friendly Initiative is designed to transform healthcare for babies, their mothers and families in the UK as part of a wider global partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.

The initiative enables public services to better support families with feeding and developing close, loving relationships, ensuring that all babies get the best possible start in life. Breastfeeding initiation rates across the globe have risen by 20 per cent since the campaign was launched. Wandsworth currently has higher levels of mothers breastfeeding than the London average. The achievement of this accreditation will help to increase this further.

This award recognises that all staff have been trained and have developed the skills and knowledge to support infant feeding and parent-infant relationship building. This enables families to make infant feeding choices that are right for them, with full understanding of what is in their child’s best interest and helps to give babies the best possible chance to grow, develop and flourish in their critical foundation years.

Baby Friendly Initiative assessors said that “the staff display excellent and sensitive communication skills and an ability to describe and demonstrate information in a clear and effective way. They consistently display enthusiasm and commitment towards providing an effective training programme.”

Shannon Katiyo, Director of Public Health for Wandsworth said: “This is a fantastic achievement for our local services and is testament to the commitment of staff to ensure all children get off to a great start in life. We look forward to supporting them to achieve the next step in their accreditation journey.”

For more information about health visiting services in Wandsworth please visit https://clch.nhs.uk/services/health-visiting.

For advice on breastfeeding visit the council's website and this local NHS website.

For information about local support groups visit https://www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk/wandsworth/.