Lanarkshire’s health visitors and family nurses are celebrating once again being awarded ‘Baby Friendly’ accreditation from the UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative.

The re-accreditation recognises the high standard of their work supporting breastfeeding and helping parents form close, loving relationships with their children during the critical early years.

Lanarkshire’s health visiting teams work with mothers and fathers, their families and community groups to promote the health and wellbeing of children and reduce inequalities from the antenatal period until children start school.

The award is given at the end of a rigorous process which includes feedback from mothers about their experience of the health visitor service, staff training assessments, and auditing and evaluating the service.

Feedback from mothers was overwhelmingly positive with 91% reporting they were very happy. One new mum commented: “My health visitor has been brilliant, taking time to listen to my experience, support me and allowed me to discuss everything I needed.”

UNICEF confirmed that it ‘was clear to the assessment team that pregnant women and new mothers receive a very high standard of care.’ They also found that ‘staff demonstrated how they would have open, mother centred conversation with mothers and the team are commended for the training offered in this aspect and were extremely knowledgeable.’

Trudi Marshall, nurse director, Health & Social Care North Lanarkshire, said: “The health visiting and family nurse teams are delighted their hard work and dedication are again being recognised by UNICEF.

“This is huge achievement has been a real team effort by health visitor and family nurse teams across Lanarkshire. Its successful delivery has completely depended on the hard work and commitment of the teams, who work on a daily basis with breastfeeding women and really do go the extra mile to offer high quality support when it’s needed.

“The assessors praised staff for showing excellent and sensitive communication skills and a clear ability to describe and demonstrate information in a clear and effective way. This has stemmed from the skills and knowledge they have developed to support infant feeding and parent-infant relationship building.”

Lesley Thomson, nurse director, South Lanarkshire Health & Social Care Partnership, said: “The re-accreditation team at UNICEF confirmed staff are extremely skilled and knowledgeable, very supportive to mums and approach them in a kind and reassuring manner.

“The staff are all absolutely delighted as they want to support parents to make the best choices for their families, and the award recognises the high quality of the services families across Lanarkshire can benefit from.

“Ultimately, this enables families to make infant feeding choices that are right for them, with full understanding of what is in their child's best interest. This helps to give babies the best possible chance to grow, develop and flourish in their critical foundation years.”

Maternity staff across NHS Lanarkshire have also been reviewed for UNICEF re-accreditation/accreditation and are looking forward to receiving their report later this month.