Highland Council and NHS Highland celebrate Gold Infant Feeding Award from Unicef Baby Friendly Initiative
The high level of support provided to breastfeeding mothers in the Highlands has been recognised with a gold award.
Highland Council and NHS Highland are celebrating a joint achievement in attaining the Unicef Baby Friendly Initiative Gold accreditation.
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Councillor David Fraser, the chairman of Highland Council’s health, social care and wellbeing committee, said the gold award reflected a high level of dedication to supporting breastfeeding and the benefits it brought.
He congratulated and thanked the health visiting teams, the family nurse partnership and family support staff who had been accredited as a Gold Baby Friendly service.
“The Baby Friendly standards provide a roadmap for transforming care for all babies, their mothers and families,” he said.
“The gold award is awarded to services that have embedded the Unicef Baby Friendly Achieving Sustainability standards.
“This means that future generations of babies, their mothers and families will continue to experience Baby Friendly standards of care.
“The award recognises that the service is not only implementing the Baby Friendly Initiative standards, but that they also have the leadership, culture and systems to maintain this over the long term.”
Karen MacKay, senior health improvement specialist (infant feeding lead) for NHS Highland described it as a “fantastic” achievement for all involved.
“Gold status requires a whole system approach and the use of testing quality improvement initiatives to support families with feeding and early infant behaviour,” she said.
“The annual reporting mechanism that is now required will further embed the great work that has been taking place in Highland.”
The council and NHS Highland first achieved full Baby Friendly accreditation from Unicef in 2013.
