06/12/2025
🔍 CLC vs IBCLC — What’s the Difference?
There’s a lot of confusion around Certified Lactation Counselors (CLC) and International Board Certified Lactation Consultants (IBCLC). Here’s the real deal:
✅ Both CLC and IBCLC are professional, accredited credentials with rigorous education standards.
✅ CLC often involves more classroom hours (95 hours), while IBCLC requires mentorship (depending on the pathway).
✅ Both provide expert breastfeeding support — including managing complex issues — but neither can diagnose medical conditions or prescribe treatments unless they hold additional clinical licenses.
✅ The difference is in training style and clinical experience, not scope of practice.
🧪 Common Misconceptions:
CLC is “basic” and IBCLC is “clinical” → ❌ False.The Certified Lactation Counselor® (CLC®) certification identifies a clinical lactation care provider who has demonstrated the necessary skills, knowledge, and attitudes to provide clinical support and management to families
Only IBCLCs can manage complex issues → ❌ Not true. CLCs are trained for a wide range of breastfeeding challenges, including more complex ones (like mastitis, re-lactation, or induced lactation), especially with experience and continuing education.
According to the CLC Scope of Practice CLC's can:
1. Use counseling skills and techniques that are supportive to breastfeeding mothers and babies, practicing in a clinically competent manner.
2. Conduct a comprehensive assessment of mother and child related to breastfeeding and human lactation.
3. Develop an evidence-based care plan specific to the needs identified through assessment and counseling, and implement it to help mothers meet their personal breastfeeding goals.
4. Ability to assess physical, nutritional, and psychosocial aspects and the mental status of the breastfeeding dyad.
5. Ability to utilize reliable tools to assess affective/ineffective breastfeeding and milk transfer.
6.
The IBCLC is not a medical license, though it’s often treated like one. And one of the most frustrating things in the lactation world is the gatekeeping of education and opportunity to IBCLCs only.
Here’s the truth:
Both CLCs and IBCLCs are trained to assess, counsel, and support families through a wide range of breastfeeding challenges — from common concerns to more complex issues. The main difference lies in the training path, not the authority or value of the work.
📣 CLC professionals: stop downplaying your education.
Your scope of practice is legitimate.
Your training is accredited.
Your experience matters.
You don’t hold a “lesser” certification — you hold a different, valid one. And families deserve access to all qualified providers.
Review the scope of a CLC: https://www.alpp.org/scope-of-practice/scope-practice-clc/
Review the scope of IBCLC: https://ibclc-commission.org/.../scope-of-practice-for.../
