Careers: Lactation consultant

What qualifications and skills do you need for the role?
A lactation consultant provides education and management to prevent and solve breastfeeding problems, and to encourage an environment that supports the mother and child. While anyone can set up as a breastfeeding counsellor or consultant, to be a qualified lactation consultant a professional must pass an exam set by the International Board of Lactation Consultants Examiners. The exam costs £350 to sit, and is held every July on the same day across the world.

Potential consultants need to have logged 4,000 hours of one-on-one breastfeeding counselling, and 120 hours of specific breastfeeding-related training. “The examination covers everything from preconception anatomy to five- and six-year-olds breastfeeding, to the impact of breastfeeding on society and economies,” explains Clare Meynell, lactation consultant and spokeswoman for Lactation Consultants of Great Britain (LCGB).

“It is helpful for candidates to be a health professional such as a midwife or neonatal nurse, so that they already have the counselling hours. A neonatal nurse might have very good expertise of the first 10 days but no knowledge of transition breastfeeding so they would have to look at that in their training.”

Meynell says lactation consultants need to be passionate about the importance of breastfeeding, and confident enough to challenge other health professionals. “You have got to be able to stand your ground and get across to health visitors, GPs and paediatric consultants, that breastfeeding is the best thing for the baby, and you want them to do something about it for the mother now.”

Is “lactation consultant” a protected professional title?
No, although LCGB is currently lobbying for the role to become a protected professional title within the Health Professions Council. “We were getting on quite well but this government stopped us in our tracks, and we have had to start all over again,” says Meynell.

Where are lactation consultants employed?
There are around 340 qualified lactation consultants in the UK, although not all are practising. Lactation consultants work across a number of organisations, and can be employed by the NHS, voluntary groups, and private companies, as well as being self-employed. They can work in hospitals, women’s prisons, children’s centres and in the community. They may work in the home one-to-one with a mother who has been referred for a specific problem such as mastitis, or lead drop-in groups in a “baby café” or children’s centre.

Is the job market for lactation consultants expanding?
Twenty-six local authorities are currently piloting a payment-by-results scheme, where one of the goals is an increase in the prevalence of breastfeeding at six to eight weeks. This may result in an increase in employment opportunities, particularly if the trial is expanded.

On the other hand, local authorities are not required to employ qualified lactation consultants to promote breastfeeding, so there may be a growth in roles for breastfeeding support workers but not necessarily qualified consultants. Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Trust, for example, is currently recruiting a breastfeeding support worker to develop effective working relationships between midwifery teams, health visiting teams, children’s centres and volunteer breastfeeding peer supporters; the salary is £13,903 to ?£17,003 a year. Applicants are required to have breastfed their own baby for a minimum of three months.

Emma Pickett, a qualified lactation consultant working in private practice says: “I’ve been a breastfeeding counsellor for five years. Paid work is practically non-existent. It’s not an area in which people will make their fortune. Even private practice lactation consultants rarely earn enough to pay taxes.”

The vast majority of those working in this area are volunteers – charities such as the Breastfeeding Network, La Leche League and the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) provide training and support for networks of counsellors, group leaders and peer support workers, usually mothers who have breast-fed their own babies.


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