Infant and young child feeding counselling: an integrated course: trainer’s guide, 2nd ed

Overview

Breastfeeding and appropriate, safe, and timely complementary feeding are fundamental to the health and development of children and important for the health of their mothers. All health workers who care for women and children during the postnatal period and beyond have a key role to play in establishing and sustaining breastfeeding and appropriate complementary feeding. This course, which is an update of the version published in 2005, was designed to help provide training to all those involved in infant feeding counselling, in all countries, in the skills needed to support and protect breastfeeding and good complementary feeding practices.

The Infant and young child feeding counselling: an integrated course includes this Trainer’s guide, a Director's guide  and Participant’s manual. Additional tools include: Course handouts; Guidelines for follow-up after training; Supportive supervision/mentoring and monitoring and an accompanying toolkit; a slide set for the trainer; a set of 24 Counselling cards and Guidance on the use of counselling cards. The course includes 79 sessions arranged within 8 modules, covering a range of topics, including breastfeeding, complementary feeding, growth assessment and monitoring, HIV and infant feeding, and infant and young child feeding counselling. Course facilitators can decide which sessions to cover, depending on the specific learning needs of the health workers in your community.

The Trainer’s guide contains what the trainer needs in order to lead participants through the course. The guide contains the information that is required, detailed instructions on how to conduct each session, the exercises that participants will do, together with answers, and the summary sheets, forms, checklists and stories used during the practical sessions of the course. This is the trainer’s most essential tool. It is recommended that trainers use it at all times and add notes to it as they work. These notes will help trainers in future courses.

Slides

• Module 1: Introduction to infant and young child feeding and growth assessment
• Module 2: Counselling skills
• Module 3: Breastfeeding - sessions 11–15
• Module 3: Breastfeeding - sessions 16–20
• Module 4: Breastfeeding (advanced) - sessions 23–25
• Module 4: Breastfeeding (advanced) - sessions 26–27
• Module 4: Breastfeeding (advanced) - sessions 28 & 30
• Module 4: Breastfeeding (advanced) - sessions 31–40
• Module 5: Complementary feeding
• Module 6: Growth assessment - sessions 56–60
• Module 6: Growth assessment - sessions 61–70
• Module 7: HIV and infant feeding
• Module 8: Follow-up after training

Annexes

• Web Annex A: Guidelines for follow-up after training
• Web Annex B: Supportive supervision/mentoring and monitoring
• Web Annex C: Toolkit for supportive supervision/mentoring and monitoring