The UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative has completed its review of the standards and assessment process for community health-care providers. The final document, outlining the renamed and revised Seven Point Plan for Sustaining Breastfeeding in the Community, is now available to download – just click on the link below.

The changes to the accreditation criteria are not great but they promise to make a significant difference to the standard of care that women and babies receive.

The revised Seven Point Plan will be formally launched at the Baby Friendly Initiative conference in Glasgow on 26 and 27 November and fully implemented from March 2009. We are currently working hard to update all our web pages, guidance documents, sample policies and checklists in order to make them available immediately after the conference. Click on the link below to book your conference place.

All community health-care providers working towards Baby Friendly accreditation are encouraged to acquaint themselves with the revised criteria. Information will be provided for those that have already been assessed at Stage 1 or Stage 2 to assist them with the changes that they will need to implement before progressing through the next stage.

We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the consultation. The result of the work involved is a set of standards that, we can be confident, reflect currently available evidence on what enables women to sustain breastfeeding, and which therefore have the potential to make a significant difference to breastfeeding prevalence rates in the UK.