Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 30
30
Paragraph: 167
We recommend that NHS England and Improvement establish a working group comprising of women and...
Recommendation
We recommend that NHS England and Improvement establish a working group comprising of women and their families, organisations providing support for women throughout their pregnancy and clinicians to develop a set of actions for maternity services to consider in order to ensure no woman feels pressured to have a vaginal delivery and is always informed clearly what the safest option is for her birth. The working group’s remit should also include researching and addressing the wider societal factors, including media and social media, that put pressure on women to want to have an unassisted birth.
Paragraph Reference:
167
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
125. We accept this recommendation in part. 126. NHSEI acknowledge concerns about a focus on “normality at any costs”. Our vision is that our staff of all professions and disciplines will work together with women and families to deliver co-produced personalised and safe care. Current programmes are focusing on multi-disciplinary training and team working, addressing barriers to escalation, ensuring organisations are more responsive to women and family concerns, that models of Continuity of Carer all have a linked obstetrician and that each woman has personalised care informed by shared decision tools that include current evidence about short and long term risks and benefits; using best principles of risk communication. 127. NHSEI acknowledge this work needs to be prioritised in maternity services and have established an improvement oversight group with a workstream that focusses on personalised care and support planning. A key element of this work is the development and implementation of the iDecide framework, which will be accessible to all women via a digital platform and facilitates informed consent incorporating the Montgomery standard. We are working collaboratively with the Personalised Care Institute to develop tools which provide decision support training for all Health Care Professionals. 128. Our work is informed by services user representatives who are an integral part of our programme planning – they inform and shape our programmes of work to ensure that the needs of women and their families are central. Our ambition is that through a process of shared decision making every woman has a Personalised Care and Support Plan in place by March 2022. 129. To address the issues around terminology the RCM have convened the Re:Birth Project established in June 2021 to undertake a research led structured approach to developing an agreed consensus view among members of the maternity community in the UK (the Royal Colleges, NHSEI, health professionals and service users) around some of the language used to ‘name’ the different types of birth. We look forward to reporting on the findings and recommendations of this important work.