Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to promote breastfeeding for mothers of babies in neonatal care.

The Department recognises that breastfeeding has huge health benefits for mother and baby and that breast milk is even more important for the most vulnerable babies cared for in neonatal and special care baby units, where it is essential to promote and support breastfeeding.In the last few years a number of local, regional and national initiatives to increase breast milk usage and improve breastfeeding support have been implemented, with an increasing focus on breastfeeding rates at discharge.

NHS England's Neonatal Service Specification requires that all commissioned providers of Neonatal Services provide appropriate family facilities, which includes private and comfortable breastfeeding and expressing facilities.

The Department has sponsored a DVD ‘From Bump to Breast Feeding' which is distributed free to pregnant women and includes material on breast feeding for pre-term babies. This is supported by NHS England.

Most trusts are working with agencies such as Bliss to improve this aspect of care and every year more units are successfully gaining accreditation for having implemented the Baby Friendly Initiative. There is still further progress to be made in this area. However, teams who have demonstrable success in are working to disseminate their practices.

A national neonatal Commissioning for Quality and Information (CQUIN) to increase breastfeeding rates in babies less than 33 weeks was agreed in 2012-13 and some units continue to work towards improving support as part of current CQUINs. To meet this, many units have recruited specialist nurses to support mothers in the early stages following delivery and again later in the transition to full breastfeeding and are able to demonstrate exemplar practices. Improvement projects focused on supporting mothers to provide breast milk for babies in neonatal units have seen statistically significant increases in breast feeding rates. NHS England does not have details of projects being implemented from individual trusts.