Infant and young child feeding counselling: an integrated course: director’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 Director’s guide, a Trainer’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 Director’s guide contains all the information that the course director needs in order to plan and prepare for the course, to decide which modules and sessions will be included in the training, and to select trainers and participants, starting several months before the actual training. It contains lists of the materials and equipment needed, and sample timetables. Copies of the forms to be photocopied and used during the course can be found in the Course handouts. The Director’s guide also describes the director’s role during the course itself.
