IYCF-E RESPONSE

Trainer Name Training Date

Save the Children

SESSION OBJECTIVES
By the end of this session, you will be able to:
• Describe the key components of an IYCF-E response
• Explain supportive, non-technical actions that all sectors can take to protect
and support IYCF at the start of an emergency
• Recognise cross cutting issues to ensure programmes are inclusive, culturally
and locally appropriate and gender and age sensitive.
• Describe common obstacles to IYCF-E programming and recognise appropriate
mitigation strategies
• Recognise the similarities and differences between IYCF and IYCF-E
programmes.

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IYCF-E Response
An introduction
Video
Infant and Young Child Feeding in
Emergencies (IYCF-E)

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IYCF-E Response
The goal

To protect, promote and support adequate

infant and young child feeding practices

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IYCF-E Response
Prevent Harm, Save Lives

Save the Children

Save the Children

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IYCF-E Response – for whom?
Service Users

• Infants and young children (0-23

months/ under 2 years)
• Their caregivers
• Pregnant and breastfeeding women
and girls

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IYCF-E Response
An overview

In an emergency response there should

be:
1. An IYCF-E policy
2. Trained staff
3. Coordination of response
4. Assessment of needs and monitoring
of response
5. Integrated multi-sectoral
interventions
6. Minimising risks of artificial feeding

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IYCF-E Response
IYCF-E Intervention Triangle

LEAST

Technical
interventions

Supportive,
non-technical actions

Communication, advocacy and

policy

MOST

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IYCF-E Response
IYCF-friendly environment

IYCF-friendly environment:
An environment that enables caregivers to
follow recommended practices

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COMMUNICATIONS, ADVOCACY AND
POLICY

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Communication, advocacy and policy
An overview

Technical
interventions

Supportive,
non-technical actions

Communication, advocacy and policy

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NON-TECHNICAL, SUPPORTIVE ACTIONS

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Non-technical supportive actions
What can all sectors/responders do?

1. Prioritize access for pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls, children
under 2, and their caregivers
2. Prevent the separation of children from their caregivers
3. Register households with PLW and girls, children <2 years of age and higher
risk groups
4. Provide privacy and safe space to breastfeed
5. Enable access to suitable complementary foods for children 6-23 months and
additional nutritious foods for PLW and girls
6. Disseminate standardized, clear and accurate messages on IYCF-E

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Non-technical supportive actions
Priority Access

Enable priority access for pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls, caregivers
of children under 2 years and children under 2 years

Priority Allow Establish

Targeted stand-ins to referral
in attend on
queues food behalf of pathways
programs PLW for services

Provide Consult with

water PLW when Safe, private,
when designing accessible
queueing activities to and
enhance access comfortable
waiting areas

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Non-technical supportive actions
Prevent Separation

Prevent the separation of children from their caregivers

Avoid Design
unnecessar distribution ID on
y separation sites with child
Rooming during mother/ baby
in outbreaks pairs in mind

Provide water /
Prioritize food
Provide mothers with /entertainment
baby young children for young
slings children to keep
in queue to
young
avoid long wait children engaged
times. / happy

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Non-technical supportive actions
Registration of households

Register households with PLW, children <2 years of age and higher risk groups

Children <2 Single headed

years households

Children <6
Pregnant women
months

BMS dependent
Orphans
infants

Mothers & children

Newborns
with disabilities

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Non-technical supportive actions
Privacy to breastfeed

Provide privacy and space to breastfeed

Baby Friendly Space in

Arsal, Lebanon in 2020.

Joelie Asaf, Action Against Hunger

Arrival/
Distribution Health Waiting
Registration
points Facilities Areas
Centers

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Non-technical supportive actions
Access to suitable and adequate foods

Enable access to adequate and safe foods for children 6-23 months and PLW

Nutrition

• Counselling
FSL • Education on NFI
adequate feeding/
nutrition
• Suitable foods • Fuel
• Vouchers/ Cash • Cooking equipment
• Diverse foods WASH • Assistive products for
children with
• Soap disabilities e.g.,
• Water adapted cups or
• Food hygiene utensils

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Non-technical supportive actions
Consistent, Key messaging

Disseminate standardized, clear and accurate messages on IYCF-E

The right message,

at the right time,
from the right person,
to the right person

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IYCF Framework: A Multi-Sectoral Framework for
Action by UNHCR and Save the Children

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Non-technical, supportive actions
Facilitating a multi-sector response

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Non-technical, supportive actions
Group activity

Non-technical supportive actions for IYCF-E

ADD SHORT BLURB ON NEW EMERGENCY
THAT IS RELEVANT TO CONTEXT
As IYCF-E advisers you are going to a sector meeting to advocate for that sector
to implement supportive actions for IYCF-E. You have been given 3 minutes on
the agenda to present your case.
Include:
• Why should it be important to that sector?
• How can that sector support IYCF-E?

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TECHNICAL INTERVENTIONS

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Technical Interventions Technical

What are they?

Supportive,
non-technical actions

Communication,
advocacy and policy

Management of
Skilled IYCF
BMS-dependent IYCF Education
Counselling
infants

Nutrition Care and Caregiver

Complementary
Counselling for Wellbeing
Feeding Support
PLWs (MHPSS)

Peer support
Micronutrient Early initiation of
Groups or Care
Supplementation breastfeeding
Groups

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Technical Interventions
BFHI: ‘The Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding’

Step 1: Maintain a written breastfeeding policy that is routinely communicated to all

health care staff.
Step 2: Train all health care staff in skills necessary to implement this policy.
Step 3: Inform all pregnant women and girls about the benefits and management of
breastfeeding.
Step 4: Help mothers initiate breastfeeding within one hour of birth.
Step 5: Show mothers how to breastfeed and how to maintain lactation, even if they
are separated from their infants.
Step 6: Give infants no food or drink other than breast milk, unless medically indicated.
Step 7: Practice “rooming in”-- allow mothers and infants to remain together 24 hours
a day.
Step 8: Encourage unrestricted breastfeeding.
Step 9: Give no pacifiers or artificial nipples to breastfeeding infants.
Step 10: Foster the establishment of breastfeeding support groups and refer mothers
to them on discharge from the hospital or clinic

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Technical Interventions
Resource for Evidence Based Programming

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CROSS-CUTTING ISSUES

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Cross-cutting Issues
Disability inclusion

Twin Track Approach

Pregnant women with disabilities, mothers with disabilities and infants and
young children with disabilities need:

The same IYCF services all receive, with Specific IYCF services tailored to their
adaptations that reduce their barriers specific requirements
to participation and benefitting
Mainstreamed disability inclusion Targeted disability inclusion

Slide taken from: Part 3 on nutrition and disability: Disability inclusion IYCF

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Cross-cutting Issues
Key actions for disability inclusion

• Communicate key IYCF-E messages

in multiple modes of communication
• Ensure that pregnant and lactating
mothers with disabilities can access
services
• Ensure that Mother-Baby Areas are

Save the Children

disability-inclusive
! Always coordinate IYCF-E actions
with disability-focused actors: e.g.,
disability-
focused NGO, Organization of Persons
with Disabilities (OPDs) within a camp

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Cross-cutting Issues
Gender & nutrition

• 60% of world's people with chronic

hunger are women and girls
• Gender inequality both a cause and
consequence of malnutrition
• Women, girls, and children are
disproportionately impacted by
emergencies and the most at risk to
violence, exploitation, illness and
death
• Gender inequalities and social norms
may be a root cause of sub-
optimal IYCF practices

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Cross-cutting Issues
Key actions for gender and nutrition

• Gender analysis and Sex and Age

Disaggregated Data
• Work closely with and involve Women
Led Organisations and Women's
Rights Organisations
• Involve women and other at-risk groups as
staff and leaders in nutrition activities​
• Ensure that GBV risk mitigation is
prioritized in the response​
• Implement strategies that increase the
safety, availability and accessibility of
nutrition services for women, girls and other
at-risk groups​
• Consider including a GBV caseworker as
part of the nutrition staff​
• Organize informal support groups
for women at feeding centres

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Cross-cutting Issues
Key actions for age-appropriate programming

• Additional training to service providers

and nutrition staff on how to provide
counselling and services to adolescent
clients
• Meeting with pregnant adolescents
and adolescent mothers to understand
their specific experiences and needs
• Utilize multiple entry points and
opportunities for integrating IYCF-E
for adolescents and youth, such as girl-
friendly spaces and youth-friendly
centers
• Community mobilization activities to
explain the importance of IYCF-E for
adolescent girls and help address
myths, negative bias, and stigma
surrounding adolescents seeking and
receiving health services

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RESPONSE TIMELINE

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Response Timeline
IYCF-E SOP for emergency response teams

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Response Timeline
First 72 hours

What can we do/ can we advocate for in the

first 72 hours of an emergency?
What may take more time?

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CHALLENGES AND SUCCESSES

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Challenges and Successes
Why are we not delivering at scale?

• IYCF-E not recognised as a priority

• Lack of funding for IYCF-E
• Agencies didn't know what to
prioritise
• Responders needed guidance on ‘How
to do IYCF-E’
– tools, models, delivery mechanisms
• Practitioners, governments and
donors need more research on what
works.

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Challenges and Successes
Barriers to IYCF-E in middle and high-income countries

Mija Ververs and Cindy Hwang (). Barriers to infant feeding in emergencies programming in middle
and high-income countries. Field Exchange 61, November 2019. p24. www.ennonline.net/fex/61/barrierstoinfantfeeding

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Challenges and Successes
Key factors of a strong IYCF-E response

• Activation of the Nutrition Cluster

• The presence of a strong component
on IYCF-E as part of the national IYCF
strategy pre-crisis
• Commitment of government and
national and international NGOs to
IYCF-E
• Assessment of IYCF practices and
needs was also important
• Linking IYCF-E to health
• Presence of pre-crisis IYCF
programmes and availability of trained
staff
• although transition from IYCF to IYCF-
E not always straightforward

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Challenges and Successes
Example of success: Nepal Earthquake response 2015

"Save the Children's emergency

nutrition response built on the
SUAAHARA platform, which offered a
unique opportunity to scale up Infant
and Young Child Feeding in the
emergency response context."
–From development to emergency: Nepal

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Summary
IYCF versus IYCF-E Programming

IYCF​​ IYCF-E​​
​Promote recommended IYCF practices Protect and promote recommended IYCF
and support long term behaviour change practices
(improve)​
Behaviour change communication​ Messaging and counselling adapted to
the emergency context that
is sensitively delivered​
National IYCF Guidance Guidance on exceptional circumstances

​IYCF support available as part of the Frontline support and scale up access to
routine health system​ skilled 1-1 counselling
Nutrition surveillance Needs assessments
Establish safe spaces
Support to build livelihoods Enable access to safe and adequate
complementary and maternal foods
Discourage and report donations of BMS

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Further Reading
IYCF-E Response

•CDC. (2018). Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Manual.

•ENN. (2019). Infant and young child feeding in emergencies: An analysis of key factors of a strong response. Field
Exchange 59, January 2019. p36.
•IASC and Global Protection Cluster. (2015). Thematic Area guide for: Guidelines for Integrating Gender-
Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action: Nutrition.
•IFE Core Group. (2017). Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies: Operational Guidance for
Emergency Relief Staff and Programme Managers. Version 2.1. 2007 and Version 3. 2017
•Palmquist, A & Gribble, K. (2018). Gender, Displacement, and Infant and Young Child Feeding
in Emergencies. 10.1007/978-94-024-1290-1_23.
•Save the Children & the Technical Rapid Response Team. (2020). IYCF-E SOP for emergency response Teams.
•Save the Children & UNHCR. (2018). IYCF in Refugee Situations: A Multi-Sectoral Framework for Action.
•Save The Children. (2022). IYCF Inclusive Training Package. IASC Guidelines on the Inclusion of Persons
with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action. 2019.
•Ververs, M & Hwang, C. (2019). Barriers to infant feeding in emergencies programming in middle and high-
income countries. Field Exchange 61, November 2019. p24.
•World Vision Canada. Et al., (2020). A Gender-Transformative Framework for Nutrition.

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