Baby friendly Initiative support worker

Job overview

The Baby Friendly Support Worker plays a key role in delivering high-quality, patient-centred care as part of a multi-disciplinary team. The post holder will provide compassionate, evidence-based infant feeding support to mothers, babies and families, helping them achieve their feeding goals while promoting close nurturing relationships.

Working with the Infant Feeding Lead and wider service, the role supports UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative accreditation by embedding best practice standards across care delivery. This includes contributing to audits, peer support education and service development.

The post holder will use specialist peer support and infant feeding knowledge to enhance the service, focusing on reducing health inequalities and improving outcomes for families. They will maintain their professional development through self-directed learning and contribute to continuous service improvement.

Please note: Due to recent changes in UK immigration and visa rules, this role is unlikely to be eligible for Skilled Worker visa sponsorship. Applicants who do not currently have the right to work in the UK may not be considered. Candidates requiring sponsorship should review the eligibility criteria on the gov.uk website before applying to assess their eligibility for a Certificate of Sponsorship for this role.

Skilled Worker visa: going rates for eligible occupation codes - GOV.UK

Health and Care Worker visa: If you’ll need to meet different salary requirements - GOV.UK

Main duties of the job

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Specialist Infant Feeding Team, working alongside the Healthy Child Programme in Crawley. The role would suit an individual with experience in infant feeding support and a passion for helping babies and their families achieve their feeding goals while promoting close, nurturing relationships.

Main duties include:

• Supporting the Infant Feeding Lead in maintaining UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative accreditation, including working with the wider Healthy Child Programme team, undertaking parent and staff audits, and contributing to continuous quality improvement.
• Supporting the Peer Support Coordinator in the delivery and development of the peer support programme.
• Working alongside Healthy Child Programme staff within Infant Feeding MILK drop-in sessions, providing support and advice to families across a range of community venues throughout the city.

This role offers the opportunity to make a meaningful difference to the health and wellbeing of infants and their families while working within a supportive and passionate multidisciplinary team.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Working in partnership, the post-holder communicates effectively with patients and their family/carers, the multi-disciplinary team and other key stakeholders on a range of complex health care matters, issues, ideas and situations.

b) Acts as an information resource for patients, multidisciplinary colleagues and other stakeholders. Responsible for signposting and referring individuals, families, carers and communities to the most appropriate agencies/services to support their needs.

c) The post-holder may experience challenge to engage and agree with the patient, families, or carers for any treatment plan. They may also experience resistance from other colleagues to an agreed action, or treatment option. Strong negotiating and influencing skills may be required.

d) To be able to provide alternative communication strategies to ensure additional barriers to understanding are met.

Main tasks

a) Holistic Infant feeding assessment and care planning including risk assessment.

b) Individualised care and the promotion of self-care. Developing individualised programmes to educate and empower patients, carers, families and staff

c) Safe and effective review and referral to the appropriate member of the multidisciplinary team

d) To share impartial, evidence-based information about infant feeding with antenatal and postnatal women to enable them to make a fully informed choice as to how they feed and care for their babies in accordance with the Trust Infant Feeding Policy, associated guidelines, and Baby Friendly Standards.

e) Professional development as required to maintain area of practice, and as negotiated in supervision.

f) An awareness of health, safety and security risks

g) Engagement in service provision and the support of any change process that impacts service

h) Support the Peer Support Coordinator with the peer support programme.

Applicant requirements

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.