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Posted on 15 Sep 2021

The Trust’s Healthy Family Team Service is celebrating achieving the Unicef Baby Friendly Initiative Gold Sustainability Award; a nationally recognised mark of quality care.

This prestigious accolade recognises a service for demonstrating sustainable leadership, a positive culture, ongoing monitoring and continued progression.  All of these provide a solid foundation to promote, protect and support breastfeeding and create loving relationships between parents and babies.

The Healthy Family Team Service was first accredited with the Gold Sustainability Award in May 2020 and this recent reaccreditation is testament to their ongoing commitment to deliver quality care for mums, babies and families. It is one of only two services in the East Midlands to achieve the award; the other being the Children’s Centre Service, delivered by Nottinghamshire County Council.

Assessing the Healthy Family Team Service on its implementation of the Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI) best practice standards, the BFI assessors audited the service remotely and gained feedback from mothers receiving care from the team. 

Areas of achievement in the accreditation report included:

• The service adapted quickly and innovatively to continue delivering support for babies, mothers and families during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• The service used technology to interact with families when Covid-19 restrictions prohibited them attending face-to-face groups. This included delivering virtual Breastfeeding Support Groups via MS Teams and using their Facebook Page, Notts Happy Baby Corner, to deliver live teaching and Q&A sessions.
• Infant feeding leads quickly rolled out a blended approach to staff training, with opportunities offered in-person and virtually throughout the pandemic.  
• Breastfeeding data was presented effectively to staff at all levels. In addition, a 2% increase in breastfeeding at 6-8 weeks has been achieved this year, despite the challenges of the pandemic.
• The service has successfully recruited a third Infant Feeding Lead, allowing the service to be split into three geographical areas – Bassetlaw, Newark and Sherwood; Mansfield and Ashfield; Broxtowe, Rushcliffe and Gedling – enabling an individual focus on the communities in each area.

Assessors were also impressed with the high quality of the evidence submitted and how the Baby Friendly Standards have been embedded and implemented across the Children and Young People’s Service at the Trust.  

Theresa Drozdowska, Alison Jee and Jo Glossop, Infant Feeding Leads, said they feel proud to work in such a positive supportive Trust. Theresa added: “We are all absolutely delighted to have been reaccredited with the BFI Gold Accreditation Award and are especially proud to have achieved it during such difficult times. The revalidation process was a great opportunity to showcase some of the fantastic work the team has done to ensure we are still able to support mums, babies and families in these challenging times.”