Care Plans for Supplementing Families: How to Use Motivational Interviewing to Create Feasible, Sustainable Plans and Goals

Lactation consultants often accompany new parents as they make difficult decisions, and those involving supplementation can hold many layers of emotional and practical complexity. We need to ensure the baby is fed, protect the parent’s mental and physical health, and ensure we hold a deep awareness of the power of our words throughout such conversations. It is clear, however, that much of the feedback from families has been that their lactation consultant has failed to provide adequate, individualised, sensitive support during such conversations. The deep desire to ‘help’ a family or to ‘fix’ their situation by giving evidence-based information alongside clear advice and prescripted plans can actually significantly reduce positive outcomes, further isolating them emotionally and increasing their risk of harm. Instead of wanting to fix, we must enter each consultation with a deep curiosity about these people before us, and learn ways to mobilise them towards their own goal in ways that are feasible, sustainable and deeply emotionally aware. Learners will explore some specific Motivational Interviewing strategies that they can immediately apply in consultations so that parents feel wholly supported, motivated towards any necessary changes, feel ownership of their plan, and to ultimately increase the likelihood of their own sense of success.