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The UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative enables services to better support families with feeding and developing close and loving relationships so that all babies get the best possible start in life.
We are committed to achieving and maintaining Unicef Baby Friendly Accreditation in West Sussex and Brighton and Hove.
In the UK, the Baby Friendly Initiative protects, promotes, and supports breastfeeding to strengthen mother-baby and family relationships. Support for these relationships is important for all babies, not only those who are breastfed.
This service enables our health visiting teams to:
- Support pregnant women to recognise the importance of breastfeeding and early relationships for the health and wellbeing of their baby
- Enable mothers to continue breastfeeding for as long as they wish
- Support mothers to make informed decisions regarding the introduction of food or fluids other than breastmilk
- Support parents to have a close and loving relationship with their baby.
Brighton and Hove
We are excited to have started journey to achieve Baby-Friendly award. See the Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust website for more information.
West Sussex
We are very proud to have already achieved the “GOLD Baby-friendly award”. The West Sussex health visiting service were the first in the South East (outside London) to receive a Unicef UK Baby Friendly Gold Award for their work. See the Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust website for more information.
The service was ‘highly commended’ for its submission and was found to have ‘demonstrated outstanding commitment’ to the effective implementation of the Unicef Baby Friendly standards.
Kate Pilcher, Chief Operating Officer and Unicef Baby Friendly Guardian for Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust said: “We are committed to providing excellent care to the mothers, infants and families who need us and achieving this prestigious Gold award is recognition of the high quality service our excellent teams deliver in West Sussex. We are delighted and proud to be recognised in this way.
We know there is always more that we can do and continuous improvement sits at the heart of everything we do. This accreditation will give us a platform to build on the high standard of care that we provide.”
Here are some of our staff in your Healthy Child Programme who helped us achieve the Gold Award:
