Published on: 14 March 2025
The gold standard support provided to parents and babies in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent by Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (MPFT) has been recognised by UNICEF UK for the fourth consecutive year.
The Trust's Families Health & Wellbeing Service (0-19) in Staffordshire and the Integrated 0-19 Health Visiting and School Nursing Service in Stoke-on-Trent have maintained UNICEF UK’s Baby Friendly Initiative Gold status following a progress monitoring review in which the services were highly commended “for the quality of the evidence submitted and the 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 services, which provide advice and support to families from pregnancy up until a child is 19, have held UNICEF Baby Friendly accreditation for almost 16 years and were first awarded Gold status in 2021.
Claire Bailey, Managing Director of MPFT’s Children and Families services said: “We are immensely proud of our 0-19 services in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent for having maintained UNICEF UK’s Baby Friendly Initiative Gold status. This is testament to the hard work of our Health Visiting colleagues who make a difference to the families they support each and every day, and in particular our Infant Feeding Team who have led the project.”
The review also sought the views of 0-19 services staff, with feedback including:
- “Our infant feeding leads are fantastic, supportive, knowledgeable, kind, caring, approachable; a real asset to our service and organisation.”
- “I feel privileged to work in such a family focused service where the majority of staff will go above and beyond to support our most needy families and will support each other whenever required.”
- “MPFT has a high quality culture of placing the service user at the forefront of what we do and staff are well trained with good support from the infant feeding team, who are all very approachable and knowledgeable.”
- “The culture within our trust is a positive one, where we are encouraged to raise things and where we are listened to…all of our staff work very hard to support breast feeding mothers and get the best outcomes for the mothers and babies and children in our care.”
Liz Lockett, MPFT's Chief Nurse, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Baby Friendly Guardian said: “UNICEF UK’s Baby Friendly Initiative Gold is a prestigious accreditation that is very difficult to attain, so to have maintained it for a fourth year is a fantastic achievement. I was particularly pleased to read the positive feedback from our staff; we all work hard to make MPFT a fantastic place to work for our colleagues as we strive to make life better for our communities.”
The UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative is a global campaign by the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund which recognises that implementing best practices in the health service and wider community children’s services is crucial to the success of breastfeeding.
More information about the Trust’s 0-19 services can be found at www.mpft.nhs.uk/services/health-visiting-and-school-nursing