Welcome to the Baby Friendly Initiative website!

About this site
There is lots of information on this site that can help you if you’re going Baby Friendly, as well as a comprehensive research archive and a section for parents. Clicking on one of the tabs at the top of the screen is the best way to get quickly to the area of the site you want, while the links on the home page will take you to what's new. You can get back to the home page at any time by by clicking anywhere in the cyan-coloured banner across the top of the screen.

Going Baby Friendly
This part of the site is divided into three main areas: Maternity, Community and University. (Our neonatal standards are also accessible from this main page but there is, as yet, no accreditation scheme linked to these.) The best practice standards section of each area outlines the standards required to achieve Baby Friendly accreditation, while the assessment stages section takes you to a breakdown of what is assessed at each stage.

The links in the blue menu on the right of the screen will take you to sub-areas with more detailed information, while the items in the orange box are usually guidance documents that you can download. Please note that the contents of the orange box vary according to where you are on the website; this is to to lead you to the documents that are most relevant to that section.

About the Baby Friendly Initiative
The Baby Friendly Initiative is a worldwide programme of the World Health Organization and UNICEF. It was established in 1992 to encourage maternity hospitals to implement the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and to practise in accordance with the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.

The UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative was launched in the UK in 1994 and, in 1998, its principles were extended to cover the work of community health-care services in the Seven Point Plan for the Promotion, Protection and Support of Breastfeeding in Community Health Care Settings.

The Baby Friendly Initiative works with the health-care system to ensure a high standard of care for pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers and babies. We provide support for health-care facilities that are seeking to implement best practice, and we offer an assessment and accreditation process that recognises those that have achieved the required standard.

Parents
We regret that we cannot provide an individualised service to parents but we welcome your interest in our work and invite you to support our aims by offering encouragement to your health-care providers to implement best practice. Please visit the For parents section of this website to find out more.

Feedback
We are constantly working to improve and update this site and we value your feedback. If you can’t find what you want – or you come across a link that doesn’t work – please let us know by e-mailing us on bfi@unicef.org.uk.