PHE’s Start4Life and Amazon Alexa helping mothers to breastfeed for longer

Evidence shows the right support helps mothers to breastfeed for longer. Public Health England’s programme Start4Life has created the Breastfeeding Friend to encourage parents to adopt healthy behaviours. It is available for free on a range of platforms, including Facebook Messenger, and now for the first time it will also be available as a skill for Amazon Alexa’s voice service.

Mothers can ask Alexa a variety of questions about breastfeeding and the answers will be provided tailored to the age of the baby. This means that they can get helpful advice even when their hands are full.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, Executive Director Institute of Health Visiting, said:

“This innovative new service will enhance those already provided by health professionals. Whether a mother manages to establish breastfeeding is largely determinant on the support she receives in the first few days after birth. However, with such short hospital stays, professional support is not as widely available as it once was. To have this back up, which can be accessed from anywhere, will be hugely helpful and we expect health visitors to want to promote the service.”

PHE recommends exclusive breastfeeding for around the first 6 months. Breastfeeding boosts a baby’s ability to fight illness and infection, and babies who are not breastfed are more likely to get diarrhoea and chest infections. Breastfeeding also lowers a mother’s risk of breast cancer and may reduce the risk of ovarian cancer.

Almost three-quarters of women start breastfeeding when their child is born, however by 6 to 8 weeks this drops to just 44%. This makes breastfeeding rates in England among the lowest in the world.

A new survey of 1,000 mothers of young children commissioned by Public Health England (PHE) revealed that in hindsight, mothers wished they had been better prepared for breastfeeding. Before the birth of their first child, mums’ biggest priorities were:

buying baby equipment (66%)
preparing for labour (49%)
buying baby clothes (40%)

However, post birth, nearly a quarter (24%) wished they had read about and were more prepared for breastfeeding and 1 in 4 (26%) of those who had given breast milk to their first child wished they had known that asking for help can make a real difference.

Viv Bennett, Chief Nurse at Public Health England said:

“Breastfeeding, whilst natural, is something that mothers and babies learn together, and whilst learning, women may have questions and setbacks. PHE is working with health professionals to make sure women are not embarrassed and receive timely help. Health professionals do an excellent job of caring for new mothers, but they cannot be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which is where our Breastfeeding Friend from Start4Life is designed to help. This tool, together with the range of support materials from Start4Life, can provide breastfeeding advice at any time of night or day and support mothers and their partners and families through challenges they may face.

“These digital offerings will help guide new parents through their first weeks of breastfeeding and beyond, providing help at any time of the day or night, and aim to complement support and advice from health care professionals and breastfeeding specialists. The information provided by all the Start4Life services is NHS approved and both services are independent of Amazon and Facebook.”

Resources for parents

Amazon Alexa – Once you’ve enabled the Breastfeeding Friend you can get to know the skill by saying ‘Alexa, open Breastfeeding Friend’.

Alexa Skills - Breastfeeding Friend from Start4Life

The new service is in addition to the interactive Start4life Breastfeeding Friend chatbot, accessed through Facebook Messenger, which launched last year, and the Start4Life website.

Resources for healthcare professionals

You can now order posters from the Start4Life breastfeeding campaign resource centre to help support your local activity – and a range of digital assets are available, including: TV screensavers, Empty belly poster, Web banners

Go to PHE Start4Life Breastfeeding resource centre

Great specialist conferences – now open for bookings!

We are delighted to open the bookings for two new specialist conferences:

Breastfeeding: a public health priority
iHV National Multi-agency Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Conference: The Hidden challenges

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, executive director iHV, commented:

“It is a privilege to able to offer these fabulous specialist conferences with such distinguished speakers to support the health visiting profession. Please do take advantage of an iHV accredited event with great CPD and the latest updates in these two extremely important areas of health visiting practice. Book your place soon as we expect there to be pressure on places!”

Breastfeeding: a public health priority

19 April 2018, in London
Accredited conference
This event is joint hosted by the iHV and the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), and is supported the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (WBTi).
The conference programme is designed to illustrate the need for support and show examples of what integrated services can achieve in the community.
The World’s Breastfeeding Trends initiative findings and recommendations which will be shared during the day can strengthen health visitor practice and improve public health if implemented.
Earlybird tickets (for iHV members and non-members) are available until 16 March 2018

Go to the RSPH event website for further details, programme and to book your place

iHV National Multi-agency Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Conference: The Hidden challenges

24 April 2018, in Manchester
Accredited conference
This multi-agency conference is a brilliant opportunity to get the latest updates and evidence in perinatal and infant mental health.
As well as stimulating learning through debate and discussion via presentations from internationally-acclaimed speakers, the day will offer focused opportunities to learn from each other through sharing best and promising practice in PIMH.
A call for abstracts is currently open – providing the opportunity to showcase your work in Perinatal and Infant Mental Health (PIMH). Abstracts are welcome in areas of new research and local innovations in the fields of perinatal and/or infant mental health.
Earlybird tickets (for iHV Champions, iHV members and non-members) are available until 29 March 2018, so don’t miss them! Limited student places also available.

Click here, for further details on abstract submissions, the conference programme and how to book

We always seek to ensure our activities comply with the UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative – our events are not and never will be sponsored by the formula milk industry.

Information for Food Banks: Supporting pregnant women and families with infants

The Baby Feeding Law Group has recently published a Toolkit for Food Banks – Information for Food Banks: Supporting pregnant women and families with infants.

This Toolkit aims to encourage organisers and volunteers working in food banks to ensure that food bank donations, and information given to mothers and families, do not inadvertently undermine breastfeeding and harm infant and young child health.

Topics covered in this resource

Why do food banks need information to support pregnant women and families with infants?
Making sure all eligible families know about the welfare food scheme ‘Healthy Start’
Supporting women in pregnancy
Supporting breastfeeding families
Frequently asked questions and myth-busting about breastfeeding
Supporting families with babies who are bottle-fed
Guidance on formula milk donations – why these are inappropriate
Organisations and resources that offer further support

Who is the information in this resource for?

The information in this resource is for:

those involved in developing, delivering, running or supporting food banks
those involved in setting standards and commissioning services around poverty and food security in local and national areas, and
those involved in providing family and children’s services.

The Baby Feeding Law Group hopes that its contents will be part of the induction for volunteers in food banks, and that the information can also be used to make posters to illustrate the key points for display in food banks.

Download Information for Food Banks: Supporting pregnant women and families with infants

Day 2 of #ProudtobeaHV #HVweek

Today’s #HVWeek topic: Healthy weight and the family – how you impact on the information and advice given to families to help them make better choices.

Welcome back to national #HVweek

We have really enjoyed reading your contributions on yesterday’s theme and hearing about your plans for this week. National HV week presents a phenomenal opportunity for us to showcase the best of health visiting practice, to show our impact and to share examples of good practice with our colleagues and commissioners around the four UK regions. We really are #ProudtobeaHV.

Today’s theme focuses on Healthy Weight and the family. The last 12 months have seen us take to the road with a grant-funded programme of Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition Champions training, with the outcome of 300 Champions created across England and Northern Ireland.

Training

Our Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition training focuses on the very broad, ever-evolving and sometimes contradictory evidence base for practice around healthy weight using a life course approach from pre-conception onwards. Increasing health visitor confidence in the current evidence base around family nutritional health is central to supporting authoritative practice that will see health visitors working confidently alongside parents around their choices for their families.

e-learning

The associated Healthy Weight, Health Nutrition e-learning is free to access and is provided over 5 separate modules – why not complete a module today?

Go to Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition e-learning Module 1

Good Practice Points (for members only)

If you are a member, why not access our breastfeeding and infant feeding Good Practice Points (GPP)?

GPP - Successful breastfeeding - antenatal information

GPP - Successful breastfeeding - postnatal information

GPP - Complementary feeding and baby-led weaning

GPP - Promoting a healthy infant and toddler diet

GPP - Feeding the older child

Videos

For those short of time our videos are excellent, easy-view, short clips from national experts Dr Helen Crawley (First Steps Nutrition) and Liz Ginty (HV and Baby Friendly Initiative) talking about the value of health visitor input working alongside family to help them make healthy choices around infant feeding.

Video - Liz Ginty - Breastfeeding (Infant Feeding Advisor)

Video - Dr Helen Crawley - Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition

Parent Tips

We have a selection of top tips for parents on breastfeeding and infant feeding which we encourage you to share with your families:

PT - Benefits of breastfeeding and FAQs

PT - Common breastfeeding worries and problems

PT - Expressing and storing breast milk

PT - When your baby cries during feeds or has colic

PT - How to help if your baby has reflux

PT - Introduce your baby to solid foods

PT - How to prevent your child being overweight

PT - Feeding your older child

How can I encourage my child to eat vegetables

Please note that some of these resources are available to iHV members only.

If you’re not a member, please join us to get access to all of our resources.

The iHV is a self-funding charity – we can only be successful in our mission to strengthen health visiting practice if the health visiting profession and its supporters join us on our journey. We rely on our membership to develop new resources for our members.

So do join us now!

iHV supports RCPCH breastfeeding position statement

The Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) fully supports the new recommendations on supporting breastfeeding mothers published today by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), during World Breastfeeding Week (#WBW17). The new RCPCH recommendations show that social stigma is a major barrier to breastfeeding and more must be done to support women to continue to breastfeed beyond the first few weeks.

The new guidance, based on the latest research, aims to give practical advice on how long women should consider breastfeeding and makes the case for the health benefits of breastfeeding for both mother and child, as well as the cost savings to families and health services.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, executive director of the Institute of Health Visiting, said:

“We warmly welcome this new guidance from RCPCH on supporting women to continue breastfeeding beyond the first few weeks. Breastfeeding is natural, but not all mums find it easy, and some mums cannot or choose not to do it, so we must respect that too. Mums often need support, and health visitors are one of the key healthcare professionals to help mothers establish breastfeeding through the universal health visiting service, but there is a need to educate the wider public and change the attitude and culture of society around it.”

The RCPCH recommendations include:

Governments in each nation to ensure familiarity with breastfeeding is included as part of statutory personal, social and health education in schools;
UK Government to legislate for employers to support breastfeeding through parental leave, feeding breaks and facilities suitable for breastfeeding or expressing breast milk;
Local breastfeeding support to be planned and delivered to mothers in the form of evaluated, structured programmes;
The NHS to ensure the preservation of universal midwifery services;
UK Governments to commit to adequate resourcing to preserve universal health visiting services;
Public Health England to develop a national strategy to change negative societal attitudes to breastfeeding;
Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland Governments to review and evaluate their existing breastfeeding promotion plans;
The NHS in England and the Welsh Government to follow the lead of the Scottish Government and the NHS in Northern Ireland by requiring all maternity services to achieve and maintain UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative accreditation; this requirement is currently met by all maternity units in Scotland and Northern Ireland;
UK Government to reinstate the UK-wide Infant Feeding Survey, which was cancelled in 2015, to ensure reliable, comparable data on breastfeeding is recorded across the four nations;
All healthcare professionals should be aware of local and national support for breastfeeding mothers.

Dr Adams added:

“We at the iHV will be working with the RCPCH to support their campaign to improve breastfeeding in the UK to help women to continue breastfeeding beyond the first few weeks and help change societal attitudes by educating the wider public.”

PHE: New survey of mums reveals perceived barriers to breastfeeding

The proportion of new mothers who are still breastfeeding after 2 months drops by 40%, according to data from PHE and NHS England.

Almost three-quarters of women start breastfeeding when their child is born, but this drops to 44% within 6 to 8 weeks. However, evidence shows the right support helps mums to breastfeed for longer. Public Health England (PHE) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months.

A new survey of 500 mothers of young children commissioned by PHE showed that more than half were concerned that breastfeeding could mean they wouldn’t be able to tell if their baby was getting too much or not enough milk. A similar proportion of mums surveyed thought that people might assume they need a special diet to breastfeed. Nearly 3 in 10 worried that breastfeeding could mean their baby might not be getting the right nutrients, indicating why mothers may stop breastfeeding at this early point.

Start4Life, PHE’s marketing programme that helps parents-to-be and parents to adopt healthy behaviours, has launched a new interactive Breastfeeding Friend (BFF) ChatBot. The BFF is accessed through Facebook messenger and provides personal support for mothers at any time of the day or night to help make breastfeeding a better experience.

To access the Breastfeeding BFF, simply open Facebook Messenger and search Start4Life BreastFeeding Friend or visit m.me/Start4LifeBreastFeedingFriend to get started.

Read full PHE press release

iHV welcomes groundbreaking new breastfeeding report

A new report, published today by World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (WBTi), reveals that while there are good infant feeding policies and programmes across the UK, these are scattered. In England particularly, leadership is missing, support services have declined in recent years and many more are under threat.

Access to skilled support is too often a postcode lottery, with no national breastfeeding committee or coordinator at all in England (scoring just 1/10). Wales scores poorly on national infant feeding leadership (4/10); whereas Scotland and Northern Ireland score 10/10, with infant feeding and infant health underpinning health programmes.

The first World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (WBTi) UK Report, on policies and programmes in infant feeding, is being launched in Parliament today (15 November). The report looks at gaps and successes across the UK, measured on an internationally-agreed scale, and provides targeted recommendations for action.

The WBTi UK Working Group consists of nearly 20 organisations, including the Institute of Health Visiting as well as government agencies, health professional bodies, and voluntary groups.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, Executive Director, iHV, commented:

“The authors of this amazing piece of work are to be commended for all the work which has gone into it and the understanding it brings on how each country can improve its breastfeeding rates. As they say, this must happen at many levels. The report lays bare the most important actions to take from policy down. I hope that its findings will be picked up by journalists and shared with the wider public who can then also play their part in supporting breastfeeding mothers.”

Go to WBTi (UK) report

Read full WBTi press release

The recommendations in this report target issues where the UK does not meet internationally-agreed levels, are evidence-based and have broad support, helping policy-makers and commissioners to use resources more effectively.

Action is needed at every level, from communities and local government, in the health system, and at government level. National leadership is essential to drive change sustainably.8 This report is a ‘call to action’ to all our governments and to every level of society.

iHV signs World Breastfeeding Week Joint Statement – Call to Action

In World Breastfeeding Week 2016 (1-7 August 2016), iHV has signed Unicef UK’s joint call to action to the UK and all devolved Governments to remove the barriers to breastfeeding and create a supportive, enabling environment for women who want to breastfeed.

The UK has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world. Breastfeeding is viewed by many as difficult to achieve and largely unnecessary because formula milk is seen as a close second best.

Extensive evidence demonstrates that breastfeeding saves lives, improves life chances and cuts costs in every country of the world. There needs to be a fundamental shift in policy thinking and public discourse around breastfeeding.

This World Breastfeeding Week, we support Unicef UK’s Call to Action, calling on the UK and all devolved Governments to promote, protect and support breastfeeding.

Download Unicef UK's Call to Action

Leadership in Breastfeeding Policy: A Roadmap to Success

Earlier this year, the Unicef Baby Friendly Initiative launched the Call to Action, calling on government to take four key actions in order to protect, promote and support breastfeeding in the UK. The Call to Action was presented to Ben Gummer, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Care Quality, at a meeting in March.

At that meeting, it was identified that the first, key step towards creating a supportive and enabling environment for mothers to breastfeed is to establish a National Infant Feeding Strategy Board, tasked with creating a National Infant Feeding Strategy and implementation plan. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child published its concluding observations on the UK 2016. Its recommendations included a need for the UK to promote, protect and support breastfeeding in all policy areas where breastfeeding has an impact on child health.

Following this, Baby Friendly Initiative has now mapped out in more detail what a Strategy Board would look like, what it could achieve and how it would do so. This is a starting point for creating a supportive, normalised breastfeeding culture in the UK. This roadmap has been sent to Ben Gummer and Viv Bennett, Chief Nurse.

Launch of Commissioning Guidance for Infant Feeding

PHE and Unicef UK are delighted to announce the launch of “Commissioning Infant Feeding Services: A toolkit for Local Authorities”.

This publication provides guidance to help local commissioners protect, promote and support breastfeeding. The document is jointly branded by Public Health England and Unicef UK and includes endorsements from:

Sally Davis, Chief Medical Officer
Viv Bennett, Chief Nurse
Kevin Fenton, Director, Public Health England

The document has several parts:

Summary: highlights key messages and themes.
Part 1, Infographics: these colourful, easy to use slides give a concise and accessible overview. Please feel free to use these in your own presentations.
Part 2, Toolkit: details what success would look like for a commissioner working within their local authority to promote, protect and support breastfeeding.
Part 3, Data: sets out guidance on effective data collection, monitoring and reporting.

Commissioning Infant Feeding Services: A toolkit for Local Authorities