Theory of Change
Creating change for babies and children in the UK
Our Theory of Change explains how we achieve impact for babies and children and our vision for change in Baby Friendly accredited services
The Theory of Change, updated in 2025, reflects the Baby Friendly programme’s evolving scope and scale within the UK and recognises the important contribution to change of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (the Code).
The aim of the framework is to communicate our vision for change in a Baby Friendly accredited setting and to explain how the programme achieves impact for babies, their mothers, parents/primary caregivers and families. It offers an extensive update to the original version published in 2017.
The framework consists of two parts:
Theory of Change Diagram
The diagram outlines the core activities undertaken to enable transformational change in systems, culture and staff knowledge to support infant feeding and close and loving relationships. These activities help build capacity (outputs) within services, which in turn translate into changes in performance (outcomes) and result in change for babies, their mothers, parents/primary caregivers and families (impact).
The diagram is in size A3 and should be read from left to right.
Theory of Change Narrative Booklet
The narrative booklet provides further detail to accompany the diagram, including an overview of our national and global context, explanation of the transformation of change in services engaged in the Baby Friendly programme, and a summary of available evidence around the impact of Baby Friendly and the programme’s core components.
Find out more
About the UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative
Introduced to the UK in 1994, the UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative has worked with public services for 30 years to support families with infant feeding and developing close and loving relationships so that all babies get the best possible start in life. The programme supports maternity, neonatal, community and hospital-based children’s services to transform their care and with universities to ensure that newly qualified midwives and health visitors have the strong foundation of knowledge needed to support families. The programme has been recognised and recommended in numerous government and policy documents across all four UK nations, resulting in the significant expansion in the number of services that have achieved or are working towards accreditation.
About UNICEF UK’s work in the UK
The Baby Friendly Initiative is one of three programmes delivered by the UK Committee for UNICEF (UNICEF UK), alongside the Rights Respecting Schools Award and Child Friendly Cities and Communities. These programmes work in partnership with UK public services to influence and support the transformation of systems and services across health, education and local communities to achieve change for babies and children. This work supports UNICEF UK’s strategic outcomes to champion child rights in the UK and around the world and to elevate the voices of children and to support their active participation.