Birmingham Children's Hospital first children’s hospital to achieve stage one Baby Friendly Initiative Award from UNICEF UK
Birmingham Children’s Hospital have recently achieved Stage One of the Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI) from UNICEF UK, after their dedication to infant feeding.
The hospital is the first specialised Children’s Hospital to have received this accreditation and comes after they were involved in part of a 12-month pilot project to improve infant feeding support across the country within children's hospitals.
Rebecca Clague, Lactation Consultant at Birmingham Children’s Hospital said: “We’re thrilled to have received this award, and it comes after lots of hard work and dedication from different teams within the hospital.
“As the Lactation Consultant based at the Children's Hospital, I’m passionate about ensuring that families and patients have access to feeding advice and support, and this qualification will allow us to continue this to a high standard.”
The UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative was set up to enable public services to better support families with feeding and is now an internationally recognised award and sign of quality care.
This award marks the third for Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, alongside Birmingham Women's Hospital’s Maternity and Neonatal services.
Rebecca works as part of the wider Trust’s dedicated Infant Feeding Team, who support parents and families in their feeding journey and can offer expert advice and guidance.
She added: “At the Children’s Hospital, we have a specialised feeding team who work throughout the week to provide infant feeding advice to any family that needs it, and for five days a week we also ensure there’s a Lactation Consultant on-site who can assist in complex cases.
“We’re really excited to continue to improve our support services, and we hope to pursue further BFI awards.”