CLCH Inner Boroughs retain Gold status for UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative

Central London Community Healthcare Trust (CLCH) is delighted to announce another great achievement as part of the UNICEF baby friendly accreditation initiative, with the Inner Boroughs retaining their Gold status for another year running.

In September 2019, our health visiting service in the Inner boroughs were the first in London to achieve the UNICEF Baby Friendly Gold Sustainability Award. This was followed by Gold Reaccreditation in January 2021, and has just been achieved again in January 2022.

In addition to this, our Ealing Integrated Early Start Service health visiting team achieved Stage Two Accreditation in January 2021 and they and are now working towards Stage Three Accreditation with the aim of achieving this by the end of 2022.

Baby Friendly accreditation is based on a set of evidence-based standards which are designed to provide parents with the best possible care to build close and loving relationships with their babies and to feed them in ways which will support optimum health and development with a focus on protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding. Organisations implement the standards in stages over a number of years, gaining the awards through external assessments by UNICEF UK, culminating in the UNICEF Gold Sustainability Award.

The Trust is proud to note these tremendous achievements as they are recognition of the high-quality service provided by CLCH health visiting teams, excellent breastfeeding rates and monitoring of infant feeding data, and a commitment from senior management to support implementation of the BFI standards into practice. Special thanks also goes to the Infant Feeding Leads as their training, development and support to the health visiting teams and breastfeeding mothers has been instrumental in achieving the awards.

All CLCH health visiting teams are working towards the UNICEF BFI accreditation.

Charlie Sheldon, Chief Nurse said, "Thank you to everyone involved in ensuring we keep our gold accreditation and continue to provide an exceptional service for families."

Congratulations to all teams involved!

You can read more about the UNICEF baby friendly initiative on the UNICEF website: https://www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/