Catherine Pardoe, Freelance lactation consultant and founder The Baby Cafe.

In my job, I help women to breast feed their children. Some women struggle with it and need help from a trained professional. My background is in nursing, but when I had children I trained as a breast-feeding consultant with support organisation La Leche League.

I have now combined my health professional's experience with my work as a lactation consultant and set up the first Baby Cafe in 2000 with my colleague Julie Williams. These are drop-in centres where mothers and pregnant women can gather and meet each other, and feel comfortable breast-feeding. They are stylish and upmarket and there are now more than 100 around the UK overseen by a charitable trust.

A particular focus for the government is to reach mums who do not typically access breast feeding support. This can include young mums, who can be less likely to breast feed than other groups, particularly those from less privileged backgrounds. They have to deal with many other factors like continuing education, peer pressure and practical stuff like sorting out housing benefit. But when they do start breast feeding they become great ambassadors to their peers, so we are introducing mentoring training to encourage this.

I have been working with young mums who are directed to us by local health visitors. We run a 10- to 12-week training programme that addresses a whole range of factors that affect young mothers who breast feed. It's about providing them with skills to create a better life for themselves and their babies so we help them with individual training packages including IT skills, getting back into education and presentation skills. It's all very practical. What started out as breast feeding advice has developed into much more.