The National Maternity Review is led by Baroness Julia Cumberlege. At its latest meeting the review team discussed vital work gathering wide ranging views of maternity services. Says Baroness Cumberledge:
The national maternity review is gathering pace.
This week I am thrilled to be visiting Sweden and Denmark with review members to see what we can learn from the innovative approaches to maternity services in these two countries. I will let you know what we discover.
The review’s most recent meeting had some difficult but very important discussions, as well as encouraging updates on our work.
Listening to people’s experience of maternity services and gathering insights from midwives, doctors, nurses, managers, commissioners and other health professionals is absolutely central to the work of the review. For that reason, we have worked hard to create a communications and engagement plan that will help us to have these conversations.
At our latest meeting, the review panel discussed and endorsed the plan, I hope to blog about it in the near future.
We had a challenging but important conversation about how best we can hear the opinions and experiences of those who have had very poor experiences of maternity services. It is important that we help these people to contribute to our review, and we have more work to do on this vital aspect of our work.
Finally, panel members provided updates on the following workstreams:
- Culture and accountability
- Models of care
- Choice
- Levers and incentives
It was fantastic to see that plans are well underway for each of these areas of work. Look out for more details on this blog in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, if you want to be kept informed about the progress of the review, including receiving details of how you will be able to input and have your voice heard, please send your contact details to england.maternityreview@nhs.net
The National Maternity Review team’s terms of reference were published in March.
