The team at Real Baby Milk send their love and congratulations to Helen Shanahan BEM, who has been honoured in the Queens’s new years honours list (page 132/140), announced on 28 December 2019.
As many of you will know, Helen is an integral and very important contributor to the Real Baby Milk Essential Guide, along with her friend and Infant Feeding Team colleague Health Visitor, Stephanie Heard.
Helen has done so much to help create and support the volunteer network of breastfeeding peer supporters in Cornwall. In 2002, she trained the first group of breastfeeding peer supporters at Camborne’s Sure Start Trevu. She has worked tirelessly to champion the role of volunteers working alongside Health Professionals to support mums, babies and their families.
Helen has continued to help mothers and babies by maximising and supporting their ability to give breastmilk, often under very challenging circumstances for those mums at the time. She has changed lives for the better, has championed loving caring relationships however babies are fed, and for that we thank her.
We are quietly confident that Helen’s work will not be lost in the current changes to the management of the Breastfeeding Peer Support Network and that it will continue to be a fitting tribute to her care and work in making Cornwall a Baby Friendly County. If you are worried about the functioning of your peer support group, now or in the future, please see our blog section which has a new resource for peer supporters – contacting your local councillor or other elected representative.