Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Clinical & Professional Responsibilities

Take the lead for planning, setting, maintaining and evaluating agreed standards for infant feeding including developing strategies for achieving and sustaining the UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative status.

Work in accordance with the NSF for Maternity Services, NICE Guidelines and the Healthy Child Programme in developing services and standards of practice.

Promote the public health benefits of breast feeding and lead to improve the continuation of breast feeding in line with Baby Friendly Initiative Standards.

Create and review processes, pathways, policies and standard operating procedures to promote effective evidence-based approaches regarding infant feeding.

Lead the staff and build successful links between other professions to support and promote effective multi-disciplinary team working.

Provide clinical specialist infant feeding support and advice where required alongside existing workforce using expert knowledge and judgement to provide individualised care/ support packages.

Work in partnership with a range of local stakeholders to raise the level of knowledge and skills to effectively support women who chose to breast feed.

·       Be aware of and apply where possible, the recommendations of the Confidential Enquiries, the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity.

Educational Responsibilities

Ensure there is a training strategy to provide foundation and updates for all members of the multidisciplinary team.

·       To lead teaching, mentoring and assessment of staff in relation to infant feeding, providing written reports as required.  Monitor training and maintain database.

·       Actively promote training opportunities that enable babies to receive breastmilk and breastfeed where possible.[FE1] 

·       Identify the specific educational needs of individual parents and facilitate meeting those needs through the provision of specialist education, care and support.

·       Review information available for parents, ensuring that information given is based on nationally accepted standards and is made available in languages relevant to the locality in a variety of formats.

·       Develop a positive learning environment for students and staff which encourages everyone to learn from each other and from external good practice. 

·      Contribute to the delivery of infant feeding training programmes and workshops for health professionals and women.

Provide support and advice for junior members of the BFI team.

·       To provide expert leadership and service design and provide support to managers, clinicians, patients and other stakeholders to enable a multi-disciplinary, multiagency approach to achieving BFI accreditation.

·       Be the trust lead for infant feeding on NICU and Transitional Care providing[FE1]  expert opinion for breastfeeding.

·       Implement and embed clinical practice changes which demonstrate evidenced based individualised care and detection of emergent themes within clinical areas through localised robust governance process.

·       Ensure there is compliance with the WHO code of marketing breast milk substitutes.

·       Establish monitoring systems to review progress in breast feeding practice against the Baby Friendly initiative standards.

·       Provide regular verbal and written reports for line managers and commissioners as required.

·       Responsibility for the maintenance of standards attained, in preparation for re accreditation process, with succession planning for key roles associated with sustained success.

·       Be responsible for information processes to facilitate progress monitoring and reporting with specific attention to key performance indicators. And report with variance analysis when required.

·       To work in partnership with local services and providers to increase breastfeeding rates as part of improving health outcomes.

The job holder would be asked to liaise between teams, trouble shoot, use initiative and work collaboratively. They would need to be organised enough to manage their own workload and to plan regular audits of practice - both in the clinical setting and over the phone with staff and families. The results would then need to be used to inform and improve Key Performance Indicators which are then fed back to the wider team, up to board level.