NHS England has recently published a Three Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services in England, setting twelve objectives around delivering safe, compassionate and personalised care.
Dr Ranee Thakar, President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said
“We support the objectives set out in this delivery plan, and welcome its simplified focus on key areas that matter most to women and NHS staff, and where the greatest difference can be made.
“However, maternity services are in dire need of investment. Without it, we are concerned that an already overstretched NHS will not be able to implement this plan. This will be another missed opportunity to ensure compassionate, personalised and safe maternity care for everyone.
“We therefore repeat our call for the Treasury to commit to funding the improvements needed, including through a fully-funded long term workforce plan."
Information on the work the RCOG is delivering around safe, high quality maternity care:
The RCOG continues to prioritise a range of programmes focused on improving maternity safety, in partnership with the RCM and other health organisations. These include our ABC programme to reduce brain injury childbirth, and development of the Tommy’s digital clinical support tool to help identify those pregnant women who are most at risk of giving birth prematurely or of developing pregnancy complications that can lead to stillbirth.
As well as publishing clinical guidelines to support safe and effective clinical practice and developing a new maternity strategy, we are also developing a new workforce planning tool to assist maternity units calculate their medical staffing requirements, to better support families and babies.
We also jointly chair the Independent Maternity Working Group with the RCM which was set up in response to the Final Ockenden Report, on 30 March 2022. This group aims to act as a critical friend to those who have responsibility to fund and implement recommendations identified in maternity safety reports.
More information about our work can be found here.