Baby Friendly Initiative Parent Questionnaire

UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative

The Baby Friendly Initiative is changing healthcare for babies, their mothers and families in the UK, as part of a wider global partnership between the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). The accreditation programme is recognised and recommended in many government and policy documents across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance.

Thanks to this work, breastfeeding initiation rates have risen by 20% in the UK since the Baby Friendly Initiative was established [1]

The Rosie Hospital Neonatal Unit

We are currently progressing through the accreditation programme. This enables us to better support families with their baby’s feeding and developing close, loving parent-infant relationships, ensuring that all babies get the best possible start [1]

The staged accreditation process supports facilities by:

1. Setting standards, which provide a roadmap for sustainable improvements,
2. Providing training and support to help services implement the standards and audit their progress
3. Assessing progress by measuring the skills and knowledge of health professionals, & interviewing mothers to hear about their experiences of care

Benefits

The programme helps professionals to:

• Provide sensitive and effective care and support for mothers
• Enable parents to make an informed choice about feeding
• Support mothers to get breastfeeding off to a good start and to overcome any challenges they may face
• Support parents who wish to formula feed by teaching them how to feed their baby safely and responsively
• Ensure all parents are enabled to develop close and loving relationships with their baby [1]

How can you support this?

We would love to hear your experiences of having a baby in our service, as this will help us to improve care for mothers and babies in the future.

We would like to talk to you by telephone if you have been discharged or face to face if you are still on the NICU. This will be with one of the nursing team from NICU who have undergone the UNICEF audit and interview training. The session will be informal and friendly.

How will I be contacted?

One of the Infant feeding team will discuss this with you and ask for verbal consent to contact you by phone if you have been discharged. This will be documented in your baby’s notes.

If you are contacted it will be within two weeks of:

You are free to opt out at any time by e-mailing the CUH NICU infant feeding team.

Contacts / Further information

The Neonatal Infant Feeding Team- Monday to Friday 8am -4pm.

Phone the Neonatal Infant Feeding Team on: 01223 256930 or e-mail the CUH NICU infant feeding team.