UNICEF

Learn more about the Baby Friendly Initiative’s work to transform healthcare for babies, their mothers, parents and families in the UK as part of a wider global partnership between the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

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

The accreditation programme

Introduced to the UK in 1994, the Baby Friendly accreditation programme is recognised and recommended in numerous government and policy documents across all four UK nations, including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance.

The programme supports maternity, neonatal, health visiting and children’s centre services to transform their care and works with universities to ensure that newly qualified midwives and health visitors have the strong foundation of knowledge needed to support families.

Services which implement the Baby Friendly standards receive the prestigious Baby Friendly award, a nationally recognised mark of quality care. The programme supports services by:

• Setting standards which provide a roadmap for sustainable improvements

• Providing training and personalised support to help services implement the standards

• Assessing progress by measuring the skills and knowledge of health professionals, and interviewing mothers to hear about their personal experiences of care.

The majority of maternity units (95%) and health visiting services (91%) across the UK are now working towards Baby Friendly accreditation. New neonatal and children’s centre standards have been introduced to help services improve care.