Contact

Publisher

Creator

In dataset

• Breastfeeding

License

Issued

Modified

Next update due

Description

Number of babies who received a health visitor First Visit and whose feeding status is known. These statistics are derived from data collected at the health visitor First Visit review (at around 10 days old) and the 6-8 week review, and recorded on the child health pre-school system (CHSP Pre-School). At these reviews, the health professional (normally a health visitor) records whether a mother is exclusively breastfeeding (baby is fed breast milk only), mixed feeding (baby is fed both breast and formula milk), or if the baby is being fed formula milk only.

The overall breastfeeding rate includes babies who are exclusively breastfed and babies who are mixed breast and formula fed. Some information may have been suppressed or adjusted to preserve patient confidentiality.

Full details are given in the notes on disclosure in the "User Guide". As a result breastfeeding figures may not exactly match those published on ISD's Child Health web pages. In August 2011 ISD implemented a new methodology to improve the accuracy of breastfeeding statistics based on postcode derived information. For details please see Appendix 1 in the Breastfeeding Statistics October 2011 publication available on ISD's Child Health web pages.

Data Coverage and Completeness

1.The number of Boards using the CHSP Pre-School system and recording data has increased since 2003/04 from 10 to all 14 NHS Boards in Scotland. NHS Western Isles have recorded data from 2006/07, NHS Shetland from 2008/09, and NHS Grampian and NHS Orkney from 2010/11. Data for NHS Grampian and NHS Orkney for 2010/11 are partial. These Boards implemented the system in June 2010 and July 2010 respectively and therefore data are not available for babies born in the first quarter of 2010/11 who had a First Visit or 6-8 week review before the implementation date. In addition it should be noted that NHS Highland did not fully implement the system until May 2007, though data are available for the area of NHS Highland inherited from former NHS Argyll ; Clyde (i.e. Argyll ; Bute Council Area) for financial years 2003/04 to 2006/07.

2.Three of the four NHS Boards that don't have data available for all years are island boards (Orkney, Shetland and Western Isles). These boards have a small number of births each year and therefore the impact of data not being available for these boards on the Scotland / All participating NHS Boards rates and trend is negligible. However NHS Grampian has a relatively large number of births each year (around 10% of all births in Scotland). Grampian did not start recording data on the system until 2010/11 and the reported breastfeeding rates in Grampian in 2010/11 to 2012/13 are higher than the Scotland average. This means that if Grampian data had been available for years 2001/02 to 2009/10, it is likely that the Scotland level reported breastfeeding rates at the First Visit and 6-8 week reviews would have been slightly higher for these years (possibly around 1.0 percentage point higher for overall breastfeeding and around 0.7 percentage points higher for exclusive breastfeeding). This should be borne in mind when comparing the Scotland breastfeeding rates for 2010/11 to 2012/13 with previous years.

3.It is estimated that each year First Visit and 6-8 week review data are missing for approximately 1% and 5.5% respectively of babies eligible to receive these reviews. These figures vary across NHS Board areas and in general are higher in areas of deprivation. In some cases a First Visit / 6-8 week review will have taken place but the data has not been recorded on the system due, for example, to the review form not being returned for data entry. A proportion of the missing information will also be due to babies not receiving a First Visit / 6-8 week review which can happen for a variety of reasons e.g. due to a hospital stay or the health visitor being unable to make contact with the family. As the proportion of data that is missing is small, this has little impact on the accuracy of the reported rates.

4.Data on feeding status is missing or invalid on a small proportion of First Visit / 6-8 week review records each year. For the financial year 2012/13, feeding status is missing or invalid on 1.2% of First Visit and 1.5% of 6-8 week review records. These figures vary slightly between NHS Boards. The proportion of records with missing feeding status has stayed broadly consistent in recent years. The highest proportion of records with unknown feeding status was in 2003/04, with this information missing on 1.8% of First Visit and 2.2% of 6-8 week review records. As the proportion of data with a missing or unknown feeding status is small, this has little impact on the accuracy of the reported rates. The number of reviews used as the denominator for the breastfeeding rates relates to babies who received a First Visit / 6-8 week review and whose feeding status is known.