Babies cared for by Livewell Southwest’s Health Visiting and Family Nurse Partnership service are being given the best possible start in life, according to Unicef’s Baby Friendly Initiative.
The service has successfully been reaccredited as ‘Baby Friendly’ as part of the initiative, which is run in partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The aim of the initiative is to work with services to support families with feeding and developing close, loving relationships to ensure all babies get the best possible start in life.
Livewell Southwest is the social enterprise which provides community health and care services in Plymouth and runs the Health Visiting and Family Nurse Partnership service.
It was reassessed on 12 and 13 June as part of a three yearly accreditation process, and passed with flying colours.
As part of the assessment, the team had to achieve an 80% pass rate in four standards of care: antenatal information, breastfeeding knowledge, maximising breast milk, starting solids, responsive formula feeding and relationships.
Other areas they were assessed on included communication and overall satisfaction with the service.
The results for the team were:
- 100% of staff can explain the importance of close relationships, recognise feeding cues and the signs of effective feeding.
- 88% of mums reported having had an opportunity to discuss feeding and the importance of developing relationships in the antenatal period.
- 81% of mothers reported to be very happy with their care of health visiting service.
- 96% of mothers reported all staff were kind and considerate.
Denise Edgecombe, service manager for Public Health Nursing at Livewell Southwest, said: “We’re absolutely delighted to once more be recognised as being ‘baby friendly’ as part of the Unicef initiative.
“This is a testament to the hard work of our staff, who always go the extra mile to support babies and their families.
“Our staff work hard to ensure they can give the best service and as part of their work they have two year responsive breastfeeding training and a yearly practical skills review.
“Making sure that we can help babies in Plymouth to have the best start in life is exactly why we do this job and mothers can be assured that they will have the best care and support from our teams to help form a strong loving relationship with their baby.”
