One of the ‘Guide to the National Quality Standard’ questions to encourage your reflection on practice for standard 2.2 is, “How do we encourage and support breastfeeding in the service?“

There are many things (even if they may be small) that early years centres can do to support families that wish to continue to breastfeed when a child starts attending care.

Strategies include:

• Create a quiet comfortable place for mothers to breastfeed
• On enrolment, actively let families know that you can accept, store and warm expressed breast milk for baby
• Be positive about families leaving expressed breast milk for baby
• Have a breastfeeding policy
• Instil a sense of trust and confidence in families that expressed breast milk will be safely cared for at the centre
• Display easily accessible resources about breastfeeding
• Provide training to staff about your centres breastfeeding policy and how to safely store and serve expressed breast milk.

For more information click here.