In the latest President Blog, Ranee Thakar explores the College’s vital maternity safety work, alongside a range of other important RCOG policy and advocacy initiatives focused on improving the health of women and girls.
Welcome to my August membership message. Time continues to fly by - it feels like the RCOG World Congress 2025 in June was only a few weeks ago. It is always such a pleasure to meet members and colleagues, listen to talks from world-leading experts, and witness how our specialism is transforming women’s healthcare globally. This year certainly exceeded all my expectations, with a fantastic programme and over 3,500 people joining from more than 100 countries.
Our 2025 Congress placed a strong emphasis on maternity safety, and I was honoured to open our flagship event alongside Rt Hon Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. During his speech he announced comprehensive plans to improve maternity care. Progress is essential, and we welcomed last week’s announcement that Baroness Amos will lead the rapid NHS maternity and neonatal services review due to report in December, here. In addition, the College was also delighted to co-host a maternity and neonatal safety summit in July, attended by over 100 Chief Executives, Chairs and senior maternity professionals from NHS Trusts, Boards and ICBs. A fantastic panel of maternity safety leaders presented, sharing data-led insights and scalable service improvement examples. We were delighted to host Rt Hon Wes Streeting for a second time, where he set out further reflections on his maternity care vision.
In my ongoing discussions with the Health Secretary, I have – and will continue to – emphasise that long-term underfunding has resulted in maternity units being understaffed, under resourced, with too little time for training and lacking modern equipment and facilities for too long. We will strongly advocate for families and the maternity workforce to be at the heart of improvement work, and for Trusts – particularly the most disadvantaged – to have the necessary staff, support and tools to deliver the safe and personalised care that women and babies deserve.
Important work is currently underway by the College to update our Framework for maternity service standards, first published in 2016 under the leadership of the Safer Women’s Health Care working party. The updated framework will offer providers and commissioners a contemporary structure for the delivery of quality improvement and safe maternity care. The College’s Vice Presidents are leading this important review and we will be seeking wider stakeholder input, before publishing later this year.
I am proud that we will also soon publish our landmark Green Maternity Report, the culmination of a programme that I instigated as RCOG President. Members often tell me how they want to do more to act against climate change but do not know where to start, so I truly hope you will find inspiration from this important work. The report includes a range of fantastic projects delivered by local maternity teams that truly show how we can define what sustainable maternity care looks like in the future. Of course, delivering sustainable care must go hand-in-hand with providing high quality, equitable care and the examples in the report show this is possible.
The College is also collaborating on the development of an innovative new maternity care Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs). Due to report in April 2026, this will produce the first-ever standardised way to capture and analyse the experiences of those using maternity services through an evidence-based questionnaire. We were delighted to see the initiative highlighted within the government’s new 10-Year Health Plan.
Better understanding the experiences of people using maternity services is vitally important to improving care, and I was honoured to speak at the launch of the new report by Five X More in July. The accounts shared in this powerful report show that, too often, Black women have to fight for safe, personalised and respectful care during their pregnancy and birth. The College is committed to ensuring that our focus on maternity safety improvement has equity at its heart and that we are actively working to reduce inequalities affecting minority ethnic women. You can read more here.
You may recall our Supporting safe maternity care for women in prisons in England and Wales position statement (2021), which supports the principles in Birth Companion’s Birth Charter and calls for custodial sentences to be given in only the most exceptional circumstances for pregnant women. The Sentencing Council for England and Wales recently announced that pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period would now be introduced as a specific mitigating factor in sentencing. This is a hugely welcome step forward, and we will work with Birth Companions, RCM and other stakeholders to support all parts of the system to prepare for this change. If you have experience or expertise you would like to contribute to this, please contact the RCOG Policy and Public Affairs team RCOGPolicy@rcog.org.uk.
Birth Companions is also launching work to co-design a national care pathway for pregnant women in contact with children’s social care services, following shocking new research that found a third of women who died within a year of pregnancy were in contact with these services (based on national 2014 to 2022 data). You can read the full study in BMJ Medicine, here. Many of the women who died had significant experiences of abuse and mental ill health and the authors’ highlighted the urgent need for services to work better together to provide holistic care in pregnancy and early motherhood. The College will explore how we can best support this important project.
Looking at our wider policy and advocacy work, the College recently celebrated a huge victory for women’s reproductive rights in England and Wales. In June, MPs voted with an overwhelming majority in support of a vital amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that will see women removed from the criminal law for ending a pregnancy. An additional amendment to try to reverse telemedicine abortion was also soundly defeated.
Our campaign to see abortion decriminalised began in 2017 and, at that time, felt a long way away. This is a truly momentous moment for women's health rights and marks the culmination of years of campaigning by the RCOG, with our partners. I am truly proud of this organisation and the work by so many of our members and partners who have helped to make this possible. We will keep up the momentum as the Crime and Policing Bill moves to the House of Lords. Read more here.
And just last month, our policy team published a high-level assessment of the Women’s Health Strategy for England, which you can find here. The analysis identified meaningful green shoots of progress for women and girls over the last three years. Still, ultimately greater momentum is needed to tackle the gender health gap and ensure all women can access timely, high-quality care. We are calling for a refreshed Women’s Health Strategy to work alongside the Government’s new 10-Year Health Plan to truly achieve an NHS with women at its heart. I have written a blog about it here.
The publication of the NHS 10-Year Health Plan sets the direction for a modernised, more efficient NHS. The College supports the three ‘big shifts’ set out in the plan and the focus on maternity safety, action on elective waiting lists and expanded outpatient care models. However, the plan lacks detail on how the ambitions set out will be achieved, and makes no commitment to tackle the gender health gap. You can read our initial response to the plan here, and the set of questions we will be using to assess future progress, here. As always, the needs and experiences of our members will continue to be at the heart of our engagement with government, NHS and policy stakeholders.
Lastly, I hope that amidst the ongoing challenges facing our speciality, you have found moments to step away, rest, and recharge. These are undeniably demanding times, and prioritising well-being—both physical and mental—is more important than ever. Whether it was a short break, time with loved ones, or simply a quiet moment to breathe, I hope you had the chance to pause and care for yourself. Your resilience and dedication are deeply appreciated, and your College remains committed to supporting you as we continue navigating this journey together
With very best wishes,
Ranee