Teachers and S1 to S6 pupils at St Matthews Academy in Saltcoats recently received their certificate recognising them as a breastfeeding friendly school.

This follows several fun, interactive sessions about breastfeeding from the infant feeding staff at NHS Ayrshire & Arran and the Breastfeeding Network (BfN).

Elizabeth Smith, Community Infant Feeding Nurse, NHS Ayrshire & Arran successfully bid for ‘Catalyst for Change’ funding from Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland, a charitable organisation promoting excellence in community nursing to improve the health and well-being of the people of Scotland.

Elizabeth explains: “NHS Ayrshire & Arran has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Scotland. There is an embedded formula feeding culture that needs to be changed if we are to improve the breastfeeding rates.

"Young people may never see breastfeeding, and although part of the curriculum, some may never get to hear much information about it.”

The team worked with more than 1,000 pupils from Glencairn Nursery and Primary School, Stevenston and with S1-S6 pupils at St Matthew’s Academy in Saltcoats who all took part in interactive cross-curricular workshops. The team also delivered sessions to some staff and parents.

The children gave some great feedback about the sessions and the team used the Iowa Infant Feeding Attitude Scale to look for changes in attitudes to infant feeding. The results showed that 100 per cent of pupils had more positive results towards breastfeeding at the end of the session than at the beginning.

The school pupils were asked for feedback and commented:

“I enjoyed the experiments. I learned all of the different ingredients in breastmilk.”

“I learnt that babies can be breastfed for longer than I thought.”

“(I learned) that breastmilk changes all the time.”

Elizabeth explains, “Now that the sessions in class have been evaluated so positively, we intend to roll this out to other schools across Ayrshire."