HAC5223 Infant Feeding and Wellbeing Service

The Council wishes to commission an Infant Feeding and Wellbeing Service for Tower Hamlets. The service will be provided within the Royal London Hospital, Barkantine birth centre, Tower Hamlets Children's Centres, other community venues and through home visits.

The service will have a primary focus on infant feeding, promoting breast feeding wherever possible, providing specialist support for babies with complex feeding problems, and advising mothers on weaning and introducing solid foods in a way that optimises baby's health and wellbeing. The service will deliver a local, easily accessible breastfeeding peer support programme in line with NICE guidelines.

The service will also have a wider health promotion role, including supporting infant attachment and maternal emotional health and wellbeing; and providing brief interventions and referrals, e.g. in relation to smoking cessation, family planning and domestic violence. The service will be expected to recruit and train an infant feeding peer support volunteer workforce who will be registered with a national accredited breast feeding organisation providing training and supervision.

Local mothers will be encouraged to take up the opportunity of becoming trained volunteers and will gain experience working in the service being commissioned. The service will work closely with the existing Tower Hamlets UNICEF Baby Friendly programmes in the maternity unit and community as well as midwifery, health visiting and children's centre services.

The organisation providing the service must be registered with the Care Quality Commission. There will be TUPE implications for this contract.

The anticipated contract start date is 1st April 2018. The estimated value of the contract is £380,000 per annum. For a period of 3 years with the option to extend for a further 2 years.