Thank you for taking the time to contact me about maternity services. This is an issue I care deeply about as an officer on the APPG for Women’s Health.
I believe every woman and their baby should receive personalised, high quality care. One of the key commitments in the NHS Long Term Plan (LTP) is to make the NHS one of the safest places in the world to give birth and the LTP sets out a range of new measures to improve women’s experience of pregnancy.
Women who are healthy and have not experienced complications can choose to give birth in the place that feels right for them. This can be at home, in a midwifery unit, or at a hospital. As part of putting the interests of women at the heart of the process, NHS England and NHS Improvement have committed to the rollout of Midwifery Continuity of Carer, so that it becomes the default model of care for women using maternity services across England.
NHS England has also announced a £127 million investment to increase staffing numbers in maternity and neonatal services and the Government is working to increase the number of midwives by expanding midwifery training places by 3,650 by March 2023. This is on top of £95 million investment into recruitment of an additional 1,200 midwives and 100 consultant obstetricians. NHS England is also making a non-repayable, training grant of at least £5,000 per academic year available for eligible midwifery students.
More recently, the Autumn Statement announced plans to recruit an additional 2,000 midwives, and the Government will be developing a long-term workforce plan to make sure we have enough staff across the NHS, including midwives.
Furthermore, a Maternity Disparities Taskforce was established in February 2022 to explore the reasons for disparities in maternity care and address poor outcomes for women from ethnic minority communities and those living in deprived areas. This is supported by the Women's Health Strategy which was published in July 2022 which committed to make the NHS the best place in the world to give birth through personalised, individualised, and high-quality care.
The Department for Health and Social Care is working with the NHS to establish an independent working group to help guide the implementation of the recommendations from the Ockenden and East Kent reports. The first working group meeting took place on 31 August 2022 and will inform the new NHS Maternity Development Plan.
I am proud to support a Government that is giving women more choice, making services safer and helping to shape maternity care for years to come.
Again, thank you for taking the time to write. If you require any further assistance, then please do not hesitate to get in touch.
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