One of the country’s top maternity advisors returned to her former organisation to present a prestigious Unicef award.
Jane Scattergood, Maternity Advisor to Public Health England, paid a visit to Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust, to present the Unicef Baby Friendly Gold Award.
The Trust’s Maternity Unit is the second in the North West, and the eighth in the country, to receive the Achieving Sustainability Gold Award and international recognition from Unicef
At a special event held at the Wigan Infirmary site, staff members from the Trust’s maternity team celebrated the achievement with cupcakes baked by colleague Anne Clayton.
The team were presented with their plaque by Jane, who used to work at the former Billinge Hospital Special Care Baby Unit.
Jane said; “I look back at Billinge SCBU with tremendous fondness, as I trained as a Midwife there too.
“It is no small feat to achieve the Unicef Gold award so I would like to pass on my congratulations to the whole team and thank them for asking me to present the award.”
WWL’s Deputy Chief Nurse and Baby Friendly Guardian, Allison Edis said; “I am absolutely delighted with the team for achieving this award – it is brilliant.
“Our local women and their families are fortunate to be able to access such wonderful WWL services and know they are receiving the best advice and support to enable them to provide their baby with the best start in life.”
The Baby Friendly Initiative, set up by Unicef and the World Health Organisation, is a global programme which provides a practical and effective way for health services to improve the care provided for all mothers and babies.
Baby Friendly accreditation is based on a set of interlinking evidence-based standards for maternity, health visiting, neonatal and children’s centres services. These are designed to provide parents with the best possible care to build close and loving relationships with their baby and to feed their baby in ways which will support optimum health and development.
The standards are implemented in stages over a number of years and are externally assessed by Unicef UK at each stage. When all the stages are passed they are accredited as Baby Friendly.
The initial accreditation lasts for two years; after this re-assessments take place on a regular basis to ensure that the standards are being maintained and to explore how the service is building on the good work it has already done.
After successful re-assessment the services are eligible to be assessed against the Achieving Sustainability standards, which if passed, lead to a Gold award.
