Prestigious award success for Health Visiting and Family Nurse teams across Ayrshire

NHS Ayrshire & Arran and the three Ayrshire Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) have retained a top UNICEF accolade for continuing to provide high-quality care to families to support continued breastfeeding.

The UK-wide UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative enables public services to better support families with infant feeding and developing close and loving relationships so that all babies get the best possible start in life.

Having been awarded Baby Friendly accreditation in 2012, followed by subsequent re-accreditation in 2014, 2017 and 2020, Ayrshire's Health Visiting and Family Nurse Partnership Teams - as well as the Community Infant Feeding Team - first achieved the Gold award in November 2022.

This prestigious award has a particular focus on sustainability, providing a framework to ensure that infant feeding care is evidence-based, consistent, and supports staff to deliver a service that provides the best possible care for new families, with a formal revalidation process taking place two years after initial Gold accreditation and every three years thereafter.

Breastfeeding promotes optimum growth and development for babies, providing nutrition, comfort and protection from infection, and as such is promoted and supported across Ayrshire and Arran.

However, the award also recognises the care provided to families who are formula feeding, encouraging responsive feeding as a way of establishing close, loving relationships with the baby.

The re-accreditation report saw NHS A&A and the health and social care partnerships being "highly commended for thorough way in which the necessary processes to embed and further develop care related to the Baby Friendly standards has been planned and implemented."

The strong leadership across Ayrshire and Arran and continued investment from the HSCPs in infant feeding was also highlighted.

Linda Semple, Chair of the South Ayrshire Integration Joint Board said, "I am delighted to have retained this important Gold accreditation for not only South Ayrshire but for the full health board area of NHS Ayrshire & Arran."

"We have continued to see an increase in the percentage of babies being exclusively breast fed at 6-8 weeks, this important milestone is only possible thanks to the implementation of this Baby Friendly Initiative across the area. We look forward to continuing to continuing to deliver, progress, monitor and evaluate our infant feeding services to ensure we continue to provide this high level of care to families across Ayrshire."