17, 18 & 24 March | Varied Evening Hours | $150-$200 |

• Community – you have the opportunity pre-workshop to research resources and opportunities in your local area – take time to gather a list of local resources and network with birthworkers and lactation professionals to start to create ways to potentially collaborate. This is a fun way to learn and start to assess and improve your own practice in new, inspiring ways, and to meet the best interests for the families you work with! (what you discover will be discussed during the workshop.)
• Foundations – includes critical thinking about breastfeeding and what we can do to be part of the solution – in a system and culture that often undermines and sadly doesn’t support or empower parents to breastfeed successfully.
• Practicalities – how to confidently and excellently provide real support to families you work with, as well as how to champion for people in the first five days after birth – the most critical period – ensuring optimal health and long-term feeding. You also learn how to teach mothers hand expression, the best ways to work with high-risk families, how birth practices affect breastfeeding, and more. Part of the training is a one-hour observation of birthing families and the Trainer working with them.
• Personal Mentoring – with one-to-one guidance from your Trainer. Following the workshop, you get a one-to-one 15-minute phone mini-mentor session. After that, additional mentoring is available at a fee, for specific application of techniques, enhanced knowledge and context-specific skills, and how to improve your practice/program. (For those within 30 miles of west Cleveland, the opportunity to shadow or be shadowed is possible.)