25th May 2016
National Breastfeeding Celebration Week will run from 18–27 June 2016.
This extended week is an opportunity for mothers, breastfeeding supporters and health professionals to come together and share what works well to support breastfeeding in local communities. The week incorporates two weekends and concludes on Monday 27 June. At a national level the aim is to raise awareness of the health and wellbeing benefits of breastfeeding for mothers, their infants and the long term public health for everyone.
This year National Breastfeeding Celebration Week is concentrating on how ‘everyone in local communities can support mothers to breastfeed, whenever and wherever they are’.
The week provides a fantastic opportunity to show case all the good work that is going on around England, to share ideas, inspire others and promote the support available to women and their families.
When national elections are taking place governments are not permitted to carry out their normal duties. The European Elections will be taking place on 23rd June, in the middle of NBCW, therefore, Public Health England (PHE) cannot facilitate NBCW as planned. To save changing the date at this stage, Unicef UK Baby Friendly Initiative will be ‘hosting’ NBCW until 23rd June and will post a ‘blog’ Monday to Thursday on the www.babyfriendly.org.uk website.
On Friday 24th June and Monday 27th June, PHE will post a Blog on their website and summarise the weeks activity on social media. PHE is also planning to launch a new document on Commissioning Infant Feeding Services in local authorities.
Local communities are invited to share their own local events with others via social media, for example; you might want to coordinate local events to share what you are doing; your priorities, your strategy and your activities, perhaps to coincide with other local celebrations such as the achievement of a stage of the Baby Friendly Initiative.
NHS England, Public Health England, The National Infant Feeding Network, The Royal College of Midwives, Institute of Health Visiting and CPHVA will be supporting local and regional celebration events by sharing of local resources on websites and through social media:
#celebratebreastfeeding16.
To showcase your ‘celebration’ please tweet a photo, along with a caption to #celebratebreastfeeding16 between 18 and 27 June. This can then be ‘retweeted’ and will be used in a ‘twitter storify’ at the end of the week.
We look forward to hearing all about what you are doing via social media.
