Feed Your Way

Feed Your Way and the wider SSBC Breastfeeding offer

Background

SSBC’s work supporting breastfeeding extended to two key projects:  Feed Your Way and a breastfeeding incentive scheme.

Feed Your Way

A behaviour change public health breastfeeding campaign addressing community and societal attitudes to breastfeeding.

The campaign is aimed at new parents and parents-to-be in Nottingham who are making decisions around infant feeding.  The campaign also recognises the importance of support networks, allies, influencers, professionals and the wider community, all who have a role to play in infant feeding decisions.

The campaign has been delivered through a combination of online and out of home activity; online channels include a dedicated website and social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and X; out of home activity includes bus shelter advertising, lamppost banners, postcards and posters distributed though partners.

Through co-production, SSBC has ensured a meaningful campaign, benefitting from desk research and findings from a county-wide social marketing survey (1802 respondents), focus groups and concept testing. A multidisciplinary group of families, Health Visitors, Nutrition Peer Support Workers, Public Health and others were engaged throughout campaign development.

The campaign design utilises local diverse family case studies, and prioritises autonomy (breastfeeding is a choice), relatedness (this is a collective issue and support is available), and competence (every attempt is a success) over health or risk-based content.

Phase one of the campaign focused on public messaging, while phase two focused on empowering workforce to use and recommend the campaign as part of their engagement with families.

The campaign launched in 2022

Breastfeeding Incentive Scheme

The aims of the breastfeeding incentive scheme were to

• Increase the number of children receiving any breast milk.
• Increase the duration that children receive breast milk.
• Provide evidence for whether breastfeeding incentives are an effective way to increase breastfeeding rates.

Breastfeeding vouchers (provided digitally) were offered to all mothers who had a Family Nurse; Family Nurses offer intensive support to first time mums who are under the age of 19, until their babies are 2 years old through the Family Nurse Partnership. The vouchers were redeemable at a variety of retailers; there were no restrictions on how these could be spent.

Mothers eligible for the voucher scheme were those providing breastmilk to their baby at six stages after birth: two days, ten days, six to eight weeks, three months, six months, one year.

Family nurses offered the opportunity to be part of the incentive scheme following the standard infant feeding conversation.

The breastfeeding incentive scheme provided breastfeeding families with:

• a financial resource
• additional validation, encouragement and support.

It also had the potential to raise the perceived importance, within local communities, of breastmilk and breastfeeding.

Why Nottingham?

Breastfeeding has well-known health benefits, but socio-economic inequalities in breastfeeding are persistent; Nottingham has high levels of deprivation and low breastfeeding rates. In Nottingham City, only 58.7% of infants receive breast milk at birth. In England the average is 67.4% (Source: Public Health Outcomes Framework for 2018/19).

In SSBC wards, breastfeeding rates at birth are even lower, with Aspley at 44.4%, Bulwell at 51.9%, Hyson Green and Arboretum at 74.5% and St Ann’s at 38.9% (Source: Nottingham CityCare Partnership).

Research suggested that breastfeeding promotion as a public health issue may prove more cost-effective than interventions aimed solely at women.

Who Benefitted?

Feed Your Way

Workforce

The Feed Your Way campaign was presented at three national conferences between 2023 and 2024.

Phase 2 of the campaign focused on sharing information with workforce; a workforce toolkit and webinar supported use of the Feed Your Way campaign.

Evaluations among the workforce show that the campaign is well-received but may benefit from increasing its reach and awareness.

Parents

In phase one of the campaign 30% of participants would change their behaviour as a result of seeing the campaign.

The campaign was viewed as non-judgmental due to the brand name and inclusive representation of families.

Survey responses showed the campaign had been positively received.

Breastfeeding Incentive Scheme

Parents who are breastfeeding

All interviewed mothers viewed the incentives positively.

The vouchers validated women’s decision to breastfeed, particularly where there was negativity from friends and family, motivated and encouraged breastfeeding.  The inclusion of mixed feeding for voucher eligibility had a positive impact on women giving breastfeeding a go.

Next steps

Feed Your Way

Nottingham City’s Public Health will manage the Feed Your Way brand going forward; work with Nottinghamshire County colleagues continues with a plan to change the brand to incorporate Nottinghamshire and to embed it as part of the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Infant Feeding Strategy.

Feed Your Way has received a lot of interest from other local authorities wishing to run their own ‘Feed Your Way’ campaign.  The brand and campaign principles will be made available through Hitch Marketing for others to access.

Breastfeeding Incentives Scheme

This project was a ‘test and learn’ pilot project and concluded in 2025.