Introducing Equity in Breastfeeding Webinar Series

In this video, Melissa, the current chair of La Leche League Collective, gives an introduction to our new Equity in Breastfeeding webinar series. 

 She discusses LLL Collective’s mission, which is inclusive support for all breastfeeding and chestfeeding families, and is the reason we’re holding the “Equity in Breastfeeding” monthly mini webinar series. 

It’s aimed at all levels of breastfeeding supporters and enthusiasts, and health care professionals, and costs just £3 a month. This is what else she had to say, 

Over the coming months, we will hear from those with lived experience and from professionals working with marginalised groups. This series aims to raise awareness of the nuanced needs of different families and the barriers they may face in getting help breastfeeding. 

Ultimately, we hope that this starts a conversation and give those working with breastfeeding and chestfeeding families tips and ideas about how to ensure everyone feels safe and able to access the care and services on offer. 

We’re all too aware that support for all hasn’t been equitable for so many reasons and we all must work to change that. There’s racism, a history of colonisation, ableism, classism and poverty, inaccessibility built into the very health systems parents turn to for help. 

In this series we hope to use our platform to elevate the voices of those who face marginalisation in the UK when they try to access breastfeeding or chestfeeding support. 

 While no one conversation will be able to represent all the challenges that a new parent may face, we hope that by combining all these voices together in this series we can build a picture of what it takes to be a nursing parent in Great Britain today. 

And with this knowledge, together as breastfeeding supporters, we will be able to better show up for families who come to us for help and advocate to policymakers who have the power to make systemic change. 

 In fact, a paper in The Lancet Regional Health- Americas Journal from January this year, discusses the importance of taking intersectionality into account when talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. They say what we’re doing is supported by evidence: 

This will be heard throughout our series by parents asking to be believed when they’re sharing their perspective.

Here’s Natasha’s own words:

Bex has this to say:

Check out our great line up! Of course we’ll keep an updated list with dates on our webinar page.

We go into this project humbly, knowing we don’t know everything. We certainly won’t be perfect but we promise to pick ourselves up and try again. With your feedback, either calling us in or out, or joining us in the conversation, we welcome you.

We’re lucky to be an organisation under the umbrella of La Leche League. For those who don’t know LLL – it was founded in 1956 by a group of mothers in Chicago, USA who were doing something pretty unique – breastfeeding – and then offered coursework by mail to help others achieve the same goals. People often wonder why it’s called La Leche League – well because in 1956 the US Post Office wouldn’t deliver mail that said the word breast, so they needed a code name. 

 Of course over the last 70 or so years, our organisation, much like social norms around the simple word breast, has changed and so too have the parents who come for our information sharing and community. 

 We hope our webinar series helps further our aim, which is quite simply:

to promote the health and wellbeing of mothers, parents, guardians and children through education about the benefits of a breastfeeding relationship and human milk as well as counselling and practical support on breastfeeding.

 Or if your experience or your community’s voice is not represented in our series so far, we also want to hear from you.  We pay an honorarium for your time! You don’t need to be a professional speaker or ever have done a webinar before. You just need to want to share your perspective and help those working in breastfeeding support to do better in supporting another family like yours. 

We know £3 a month is a lot for some folks for this series and we’re looking to build a scholarship fund to help with the cost. And if you’d like to support us financially, we’d welcome that immensely. Our work is based on donations and the labour of dedicated volunteers, so your money will have an immediate impact on equity in breastfeeding. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for our digital donation tin.

We’re so excited to learn more with you through this series. Come and join us to learn more about how you can support neurodivergent parents, Black mums, families with disabilities, South Asian mothers, queer families, travelling and Gypsy mothers, those who’ve experienced trauma, migrants, D/deaf families and so many more! 

Let’s listen and believe them!

At the start of each webinar, we’re planning on asking questions that we want to know the answers to but we want to know what you think, too. Tell us what your response was, what made you uncomfortable and what made you think. What questions did it raise for you?  What are you going to do differently going forward? 

Those of us running the series and all of the speakers are each on our own different journey towards understanding how marginalisation may impact different communities. We too are open to learning more and reading your feedback. Send us an email at equity @ lllcollective.org.uk.

Throughout the series we think it is especially important to consider how accessing appropriate support may be even more challenging for those who are intersectionally marginalised. We recognise that each speaker speaks from their own experiences and ask that we all consider how compounded identities makes getting equitable care that much harder.

We have so much work to do to make breastfeeding support equitable for all. 

Thanks for joining us on this journey and for taking the time to explore equity in breastfeeding along with us at LLL Collective.