Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 6
6
Deferred
Include targets and strategies in the workforce plan to diversify NHS maternity leadership.
Recommendation
The Government should also ensure the forthcoming workforce plan explicitly includes targets and strategies to diversify NHS leadership, specifically maternity service leaders and educators. This must be 32 accompanied with robust monitoring mechanisms that can be used to track progress and hold Trusts to account for their performance. (Recommendation, Paragraph 39)
Government Response Summary
The government details NHS England's collaboration with the RCOG to ensure optimal staffing levels for high-quality maternity care and its work on job planning principles for obstetric consultants. It does not address the recommendation to include targets and strategies for diversifying NHS leadership in the forthcoming workforce plan.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
NHS England is working in collaboration with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) to support trusts to ensure optimal staffing levels are in place to provide high-quality maternity care services. RCOG provided a comprehensive census of the obstetric workforce at a trust level, including possible comparisons with unit acuity (a measure of the severity of a patient’s condition and the urgency with which they need to be assessed). It demonstrated significant variation with no real guide as to what level of staffing is safe. In collaboration with RCOG and regional maternity teams, NHS England is producing a set of principles and expectations to guide job planning for obstetric consultants at trust level, which will lay out what activities must be covered to provide a safe maternity service. NHS England and RCOG will aim to share this work as soon as possible to support planning. Data