ONly a few weeks till the kids go back to school and all will be back to normal, the training begins 12th September, I just hope all those interested continue with thier enthusiasm.

Also this week we had our advertisement turn up in the local press - advertising us, the picnic next week, and how to contact me for details of becoming a peer! Very pleased! I thought this wasn’t going to happen as I hadn’t had any contact back. So now we have advertised via press, internet and fliers.

And excellent news that ThinkPublic are going to help us to produce our posters using some of their designers, so the fee’s will drop dramatically, which is a great help as until the constitution is finalised we cannot apply for more budget than we have with the winning fees, and we want that to go as far a possible. Already it is making a huge difference to our service.

I think along this journey we are learning so much about how we can improve the services image aswell as the other ways we are able to bring in new volunteers. All the publicity is certainly making an impact, lets wait and see how the pucnic goes next week….

At the moment the success of the work the volunteers do is apparent, not only are there families flooding into the group we attend in Cramlington and ringing the mobile helpline but they are commenting on how they would not still be feeding if it wasn’t for the girls dedication, and now hopefully we can be even more effective thanks to the winning funds that have paid for all our new resources.

The picnic in the park is looking to be a great success too, there are people coming from throughout Northumberland and already some have said they are coming to meet us to see about training to join the network. Aside from the newspaper advert we hope will be in local press, we produced some fliers advertising the event aswell as how to contact me (Angela) to become a volunteer. There are at present 10 awaiting the school holidays to be over and they will train too, hopefully we will recruit more at the picnic. Watch this space.

Also we have had our new bags printed with the logo, so all the ‘tool kit’ can go live very soon. Karen and myself met with a rep from a breastfeeding products company and have also agreed some new products to be used locally aswell as having some things donated to be used in the kits.

Because we have now approached the school holidays the peer work slows a little because groups we attend go on hold in local centres and of course alot of volunteers have children off school, so this is an opportune time to spend some time in preparation for the September term starting again with new enthusiasm and vigor. Of course there are some still very active and doing a fantastic job.

I hope to add some photos soon of the things we have discussed here - t-shirts, the picnic, our tool kits etc.

Angela x

On a positive tho, we have nearly completed the kits. Hopefully they will be in full use in the next week or two. we were able to come by some low cost Hessian bags that will just need our logo applied and then we can go!

We learn something everyday!!

Angela had a preliminary meeting with the design company who are going to help us design a new advert to apear regularly in the press and some posters for our use, they also have helped us make some good contacts in the newspapers. We are to meet with them again soon to ‘brainstorm’ some of our ideas, and make use of their experience.

The company have already helped us agreed space in the local press for an advert for our ‘Picnic in the Park’ aswell as a journalist to come do coverage and an article afterwards, they are going to pass on names and details next week.

Our team is having such an influence, that some of the student nurses working with local health centres have asked for our help in producing a presentation about Benefits of Breastfeeding and they also want to bring in the benefit of peer support.

We had our team meeting with an excellent attendance, from peers aswell as health professionals, including a newly trained peer and some student nurses. It is good to be able to make more people aware of just how beneficial the volunteer peers are in our community, hopefully showing the students the worth of the group. We were able to share experiences aswell as information updates and to make plans.

We made lots of great plans for the next month or two, organizing a picnic in the park during school holidays for all the peers throughout Northumberland aswell as the families we work with. We hope to get this publicized in the local press, so have to work on getting contacts. Also it is possible that all the peers from Blyth Valley can now wear their new T-shirts they all picked up at the meeting as a nice surprise, with our new and improved logo. We decided to stick with the black tee and pink writing like our pitch t-shirts were, hopefully i can put on a photo of the team wearing them soon.

Also through one of the Peers, who now works for the Care trust as an Infant feeding advisor (Karen from earlier blogs), we have made a contact with someone to help us go through the process of applying to be a constituted group. Everyone is so excited about this now, as we can see how much more we could do by having our own budget, Thanx to Journeys to Health. The peers are also getting more opportunities to be available to families in health care settings like clinics and workshops aswell as baby groups, and the more people we can train the more avenues we can access.

I think a large project is going to be publicity, through internet and local press/information boards. We want as many people as possible to have Breastfeeding on their lips, and it not be a taboo subject, aswell as they’ll know just where to go to find information, but also we want breastfeeding ladies past and present to see how they can join our team.

That all for now folks bbs.

We have purchased more items to be used in the ‘tool kit’ we are compiling, so soon these will be complete and ready for use, next week at the team meeting we will discuss any other suggestions for the kit aswell as how to move forward from here. T-shirts for all volunteers have been ordered so that soon all volunteers will present themselves in a proffessional and uniform appearance, identifying them as part of the Breastfeeding network of support, NHS ID badges are also in the pipeline so our identity as part of the Care Trusts team is known, the ID is something we have been working on for a while and hopefully this will happen soon. We also plan to contact the Northumbria Foundation Trust for more info on being registered as part of thier volunteer team especially for Hospital Visiting.

Next week is our teams monthly meeting where we get together to share experiences aswell as make plans for the next month ahead, there is a renewed enthusiasm since we won the pitch and started to put some of our ideas into reality. It has been such a priceless experience and has helped all the team to gain a new focus and we are excited about the plans we have.

For now I am off to visit some families in Hospital and pick up the list of ladies who we make a courtesy contact to once they get home from hospital so they know we are there to help and where to find us, so will catch up soon.

Angela x

So orders are in progress and plans being made for them to be complete asap.

We are also considering becoming a constituted group so that we can apply for further funding and be more in control of how the group will run including how monies will be used for things for the families we work with in the community like Summer fairs etc. One of the other local bf groups is holding a fair soon and have in the past, aswell as day trips and other activities,  it sounds such a positive idea hoping that whilst all these families are having fun together they are also in the right place to talk to someone for advice or be able to share experiences and help other mums by just being together in a relaxed setting. We could even do fund raising during such activities. During the time in the green room at ‘Pitch the Project’ we were given some names and contacts of people who could help us make steps toward this, so we will have to make contact there soon.

Also we have learned some valuable lessons about some of the things we offered as a group that did not go as we had planned and we are now looking at how being a more organised group we would be able to offer a more valuable service in the ways the families really would like and benefit. So we are spending some time reviewing how we have been working and how we can make improvements so that the peer support is directed for the best results.

And finally for now, it has been so nice to see how positive our new volunteers are and we are looking forward to them joining us in the areas we cover.

Bye for now

Angela