The Breastfeeding Network are delighted to have been asked by government to run an important pilot night-time breastfeeding helpline service in partnership with the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers (ABM). This pilot funding will allow us to extend the hours of the respected National Breastfeeding Helpline that we run together.
Launching on Friday 29th March 2024 and funded by The Department for Health and Social Care’s Start for Life Programme, NBH @ Night will allow us to reach more families with round-the-clock information and support through our telephone helpline. This funding covers a trial period of 12 months during which demand for the continuation of this service will be assessed.
The NBH @ Night helpline service will be managed and delivered by a team of paid staff 7 days a week between the hours of 9:30pm and 9:30am. Our daytime National Breastfeeding Helpline and social media messaging service will continue to be an invaluable lifeline for breastfeeding families during our current hours of 9:30am to 9:30pm.
In 2022, The University of Central Lancashire’s Maternal and Infant Nutrition and Nurture Unit (MAINN) asked callers to the daytime National Breastfeeding Helpline and social media services, about their experience. The response was overwhelmingly positive and demonstrated just how valuable our current National Breastfeeding Helpline and the information and support of our highly skilled volunteers is to supporting mothers and families at all stages of their breastfeeding journey.
Some of the key findings from this survey included:
· 99.15% of callers said they would recommend the services to others
· 97.32% felt the volunteers had enough time for them
· 92.25% reported being able to put into practice the information they had received
· 96.17% felt reassured after their call
Callers were also asked their thoughts on extending the hours of the service to offer support during the evening and at night, and 32.88% of our daytime service callers wanted to see this. NBH already takes an average of 40,000 calls during the day, each year. We are delighted that the introduction of NBH @ Night will give us the opportunity to extend this invaluable national service and to reach even more families with breastfeeding support when they need it most.
We have now recruited a fabulous team of staff with voluntary or paid experience in breastfeeding peer support, and a passion for delivering non-judgemental, evidence based infant feeding support on our new overnight service.
If you are interested in working for the Breastfeeding Network you can find a list of all our current vacancies here
From Friday 29th March, our day time helpline team will be available as usual from 9:30am – 9:30pm and then our NBH @ Night helpline service will be on from 9:30pm – 9:30am using the same National Breastfeeding Helpline number; 0300 100 0212.
We feel well prepared (and excited!) for the launch of our new overnight helpline but we do ask that you bear with us in the early days as we cannot predict how high the volume of calls may be. If all of our helpline team are busy supporting other callers then there will be an option to leave a voicemail, or you could send a message through our social media messaging service. Voicemails and messages will be picked up by our daytime team from 9:30am.
We are delighted to have been awarded this opportunity to continue doing what we do best; supporting even more mums and parents when they need us most.