Young Mums Accredited Breastfeeding Peer Support Project Executive Summary

Young Mums Accredited Breastfeeding Peer Support Project – Executive Summary

Real Baby Milk, now a project of Pollenn CIC, has worked in partnership with the NHS maternity, Health Visiting and Infant Feeding Co-ordinator colleagues together with Public Health since 2008. We deliver high quality Accredited Breastfeeding Peer Support Training, Volunteer mentoring and have run a 6-area pilot for the 72 Hour Infant Feeding Service (2010-12).

Real Baby Milk was commissioned by Public Health in the financial year 2013/14 to deliver accredited Breastfeeding Peer Support Training to 10 young mums as part of an attempt to reach one of the groups identified as least likely to continue.

This project was originally conceived to offer accredited Breastfeeding Peer Support Training to 10 young (19 and under) mums who would then go on to offer support within their peer groups (not specifically Breastfeeding Peer Support Groups). Young parents are a targeted area of Public Health and fall into a Health Inequality category.

Successes of the Project:

· Despite expecting these young women to be resistant to volunteering at the standard Peer Support Groups all of them are currently working through the DBS procedure to be attached to their local groups.

· Possible reasons as to why this previously unexpected outcome has occurred could be due to the active mentoring from our PSM but also that contact with our Trainer and other RBM staff has dispelled any myths about what sort of women volunteer at groups.

· All 5 of the young women completing the course reported increased confidence from undertaking the course, not only from their increased knowledge and understanding of the value of their breastfeeding, but in relatively simple things such as using public transport and thinking and planning around unexpected occurrences.

· All 5 of the young women completed their Assessment Packs and it is expected that they will achieve the Level 2 Award with 3 credits from Apt Awards.

· ITV Westcountry expressed an interest in reporting on the course in their local news bulletin, which gained some very positive exposure for the project with a total of close to 4,000 views of the clip via the RBM Facebook page.

Challenges to the Project

Recruitment

· There were staffing recruitment difficulties initially which delayed the project start

· Accredited Training Course Trainer numbers had fallen to only 2 in the County due to the absence of Training Courses during the previous 12 months leading to the Zero hour Contracted Trainers finding other regular work.

· Recruitment of the young mums (19 & under) proved impossible even through the Family Nurse Partnership, Young Mums Will Achieve and Health Visitor/Children Centre route. A pragmatic decision was made to move the age range to include mums 24 and under.

· There was a small pool of potential applicants due to the course requiring a positive breastfeeding experience of the young women applying. The avoidance of Teenage pregnancies has been the subject of government funding in the previous 10 years or so and the level has been falling. In addition, the resistance of young women in our culture to breastfeeding coupled with low support levels overall meant that the number of women eligible to apply for this course was limited by all of these factors.

Cost of the Project

· The set –up and recruitment time and mentoring in the run up and during the course took around double the number of hours and the adjustment of the course from 6 weeks (6 x 2 hour sessions) to 4 weeks (4 x 3 hour sessions) was completed through the goodwill of the Trainer and PM as the difficulty in recruiting and expense of mentoring the young women had expended the budget in full.

· RBM had originally priced at 30 minutes per mum and 2 hours management time per week and had this been the agreed contract price, it would have meant that there would have been a minimal loss for RBM on this course.

Venue

· RBM was committed to using Children’s Centres as venues for the delivery of the course, partly due to cost – they are free to RBM as part of the encouraging Breastfeeding agenda – but also due to the recognition that CCs are set up well for families in proximity to public transport links etc. which was important for this course. However, due to CC staffing issues, finding a suitable CC venue on the day our Trainer and the young mums could all attend was very difficult.

Mentoring

· The young women who eventually attended and completed the course (5) were delightful, committed and well engaged with the Trainer, PM and PSM but even having said this, the task of getting these mums to the course using a variety of public transport methods and transport was very challenging. It involved many text messages and mobile phone calls at 10pm and before 8am to the PM/PSM

· Offering the higher-level course (Level 2) had a positive influence on the young women’s confidence levels but had mentoring and support costs associated with this decision.

Project Engagement – partners and young mums

· The Family Nurse Partnership proved a good source of contact with younger mums and this method of initial referral worked well in that the FN was regularly engaging with the young mum and was able to forward and act as broker for the application procedure.

· Real Baby Milk were flexible in their approach to how long the course should last as previous experience had shown that 6 weeks (x 2hours) had been difficult for some of the mums to commit to.

· The PSM, who started off herself as a young mum, engaged with various groups through a variety of methods including social media, email and messaging and worked hard to spread the word via Facebook etc.