Baby Friendly Unit

Bradford Hospitals NHS Trust’s Neonatal unit was the first level 3 unit to achieve Baby Friendly neonatal accreditation in December 2017 and received reaccreditation of the standards in February 2023.

This success demonstrates the high standards of care the unit provides to ensure babies and families receive evidenced based high quality care to improve family experience and health outcomes. The standards support parents to be partners in their babies care, build healthy close and loving relationships with their babies and supporting them to feed their babies responsively, prioritising breast milk for the most vulnerable babies.

We know being on a neonatal unit can create feelings of stress and uncertainty for families; by embedding the standards on the unit it helps us provide an environment which we believe is welcoming and homely.

Parents are valued as partners in their babies’ care; we support and encourage parents to provide comfort and care to their baby from the very start of their journey to build healthy relationships and confidence in preparation for discharge. Parents are the experts when it comes to their baby and we welcome them to be involved in as much care as possible with unrestricted access to their baby.

Parents as partners in care

Skin to skin is incredibly important for health brain development and growth and helps baby feel safe and secure. Staff will support parents to provide skin to skin with their baby daily where possible to help their baby grow stronger each day.

We work hard to make the unit comfortable to allow parents to spend as much time with their baby as possible; trying to remove some of the barriers to parents being able to stay for long periods by providing free parking, big comfy reclining chairs, free meals for parents who stay for long periods of the day, lockers to keep personal items safe and welcoming the use of personal items for their baby.

Providing breast milk for your preterm baby

Expressed breast milk is incredibly important for sick and preterm babies and is the best medicine a baby can receive while on the neonatal unit. The unit has a highly skilled infant feeding team who can provide around the clock support to help mums get started with expressing this liquid gold medicine for babies.

We can provide ongoing support and all the equipment needed to support a mum to express milk for their baby for the duration of their hospital stay and support transition to oral feeds when baby is ready.

Making positive memories

The neonatal journey may have many challenges but it also has many extra milestones to celebrate along the way. We encourage families to take lots of pictures to document their journeys. The neonatal journey folder inserts are a great way for families to look back on how far they have come.