Breastfeeding Support Services

Overview

Koala North West are a local third sector charity organisation. Our partnership has directly improved the maintained Breastfeeding for families in Cheshire West and Chester due to Koala's management and delivery of a group of skilled volunteers who support infant feeding and early relationships. The evidence base (Best Start in Life 2022) shows us that early relationships build lifelong benefits both physically and emotionally. Koala's volunteer model in unique, and well respected in the area. Patient feedback in September 2025 highlighted the positive impact that Koala's groups, phone calls, and social media have delivered to our families when they need it under delegation with effective governance. The commissioner of Starting Well 0-19 services endorses the service level agreement between CWP and Koala recognising both the clinical benefits but also the social value - the opportunity for local people to volunteer, retrain, and support their communities. The cost of the agreement with Koala is the average cost of one specialist nurse a year, one nurse could not cover the same level of advice and guidance, group delivery and overall breastfeeding support on such scale. The specialist nurse time of those in post is more available for other targeted and specialist delivery that is not appropriate for skill mixed delivery due to the support of this partnership. As incumbent providers, Koala possess the necessary human and technical resources and experience to perform the contract to an appropriate quality standard.