We recently collaborated with the Infant Feeding Team at the James Paget University Hospital to design a survey with the aim of trying to understand how the service needs to be adapted to provide all families with the best support possible. We were interested in hearing about breastfeeding support experiences since the start of the Coronavirus lockdown where the traditional support groups, clinics, cafe's and services had to cease.

The survey results showed that:

• Most families felt somewhat prepared for breastfeeding before baby arrived (although, some of these families may have experienced antenatal education that others, further into the pandemic, did not).
• Most families wanted to have video calls made available with the Infant Feeding Team. 
• Most families wanted to receive an antenatal pack via email to help prepare themselves for breastfeeding.
• Nearly all families felt they could access the JPUH Infant feeding team for support in the early days once baby had arrived.
• Nearly all families found the information posted on the Bumps to Breastfeeding page useful.
• Most families also wanted to be able to access a peer supporter by phone.

As a result of your collective voices, the following changes have started taking place: 

• The tongue tie clinic run by Kay Horn the Infant Feeding Lead is now reopened and being accessed by families for tongue tie procedures.
• The Infant Feeding Team continue to make calls to all families discharged as breastfeeding from delivery suite and the ward.
• The Infant Feeding Team are moving towards getting an antenatal pack available for families before delivery,.
• The Infant Feeding Team are working towards opening a face to face clinic to allow them to support parents who are struggling with breastfeeding.
• The team are also working on how to utilise the skills of the peer supporters to provide additional support for families in these difficult times.

Thank you to all those people who participated in this survey, and any of our other feedback surveys or tools. If you would like to give feedback or get involved with the MVP, please pop a message over to us, we'd love to hear from you. 
Thanks for reading,
Kaya (Breastfeeding Lead Service User Rep)

Recently, I shared the below presentation at the MVP meeting. It was an opportunity to talk to the JPUH Maternity health professionals and maternity related stakeholders, such as the CCG, Healthwatch, SANDS and Get Me Out about the views that service users have regarding the changes to services that had taken place as a result of Coronavirus. 

As a result of your feedback, work was done behind the scenes to enable the reintroduction of birth partners attending the 12 and 20 week scans, this was particularly important to parents who had tragically experienced bereavement of a baby and were incredibly worried about attending scans alone. We raised concerns about the impact on first time parents who were without the usual support networks of antenatal classes and groups to attend. Mental health of birthing people and their families was discussed, and agreed as a future workstream. Breastfeeding support was a hot topic, service users feel more needs to be done postnatally- our Breastfeeding MVP lead has been working with the Infant Feeding Leads at the JPUH and has been pleased to share that tongue tie clinics have now been reinstated. There will be a blog post specifically regarding breastfeeding support to follow. 
Time was also spent discussing communication, we discovered that overwhelmingly, respondents preferred to use a digital platform to keep abreast of maternity updates. The MVP suggested that more work needs to be done on the JPUH social media management, perhaps including training on the use of social media and the impact and influence the tool can have.

For now, please have a glance through the slides, if you'd like to get involved in the voluntary work we do, please complete the contact form, we'd love to hear from you!
Thanks for reading, 
​Jodie