Infant Feeding and Emotional Wellbeing Support Service

Provision of Infant Feeding and Emotional Wellbeing Support Service Infant Feeding: • Improving access to information, advice and support, including antenatally on the importance of early relationships and the benefits of breastfeeding for the health and wellbeing of the baby and mother. • Ensuring access to one-to-one practical help on maternity wards and in the community, from healthcare professionals and/or trained peer supporters, to support breastfeeding initiation, responsive feeding and relationship building during the immediate postnatal period. Provision of an infant feeding peer support service • Upskilling the workforce (community, voluntary, and health) to ensure a wide range of professionals/practitioners have the knowledge, skills and education to promote breastfeeding • Ensuring that drop-in infant feeding support sessions/groups are available in the community • Provision of equipment to loan for parents who need it (e.g. breast pumps), and staff sensitively support parents to use it. Perinatal and Infant Mental Health: • Maintain, develop or extend existing mild to moderate perinatal mental health provisions to reach more families. • Improved access to training that enables practitioners to have sensitive, inclusive conversations with parents and carers about wellbeing and challenges they might be experiencing, as early as possible • Improved universal parent–infant relationship services • Improved support available in a range of different settings • Improved awareness of the importance of parent–infant relationships for the workforce • Improved perinatal mental health support for fathers and co-parents • Developed and/or improved care and referral pathways to ensure support is provided when needed for babies and their families