Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to encourage new mothers to breastfeed.

The Government is committed to supporting breastfeeding, as the health benefits are clear for mothers and their babies. We would still like to see more mothers breastfeeding and doing so for longer and are working with our partners including Public Health England (PHE), NHS England and UNICEF to achieve this goal.

The promotion of breast feeding is one of the six high-impact areas for health visiting, with health visitors supporting parents around infant feeding. PHE is working with local services to create breastfeeding friendly communities, with midwives and health visitors promoting best practice, and through the Start4Life campaigns, which provide parents with trusted National Health Service advice through the Start4Life ‘Breastfeeding Friend’ (an interactive Facebook Messenger ‘ChatBot’), and the Start4Life website. The latter contains a range of leaflets and resources that professionals can order for free and provides a dedicated breastfeeding helpline.

PHE and UNICEF UK have developed a toolkit to support commissioning of evidence-based interventions to improve breastfeeding rates across England, including provision of effective professional support to mothers and their families through implementation of the Baby Friendly Initiative in every maternity unit. PHE is encouraging Local Maternity Systems across the country to include plans to increase the number of babies’ breastfed at six months within their transformation plans.

Local areas are working to improve breastfeeding. In Blackpool, for example, the local health service, working through the Family Nurse Partnership ADAPT programme, is seeking to increase the frequency of the use of current materials and provide new materials to first time young mothers. These more partner-focused materials will seek to address the role of the family and partner by introducing partners to the subject early and provide a peer support service. They will also provide a new communication tool for family nurses to practice difficult conversations.