Guide to Maternity Services
What you are entitled to:
The Government document "Maternity Matters: Choice, access and continuity of care in a safe service", states that:
The aim of health reform in England is “to develop a patient-led NHS that uses available resources as effectively and fairly as possible to promote health, reduce health inequalities and deliver the best and safest healthcare”1. For maternity services this means providing high quality, safe and accessible services that are both women focused and family-centered.
In 2005, the Government underlined the importance of providing high quality, safe and accessible maternity care through its commitment to offer all women and their partners, a wider choice of type and place of maternity care and birth. Building on this commitment, four national choice guarantees will be available for all women by the end of 2009 and women and their partners will have opportunities to make well informed decisions about their care throughout pregnancy, birth and postnatally.
The national choice guarantees described in this document are:
1. Choice of how to access maternity care
2. Choice of type of antenatal care
3. Choice of place of birth – Depending on their circumstances, women and their partners will be able to choose between three different options. These are:
• a home birth
• birth in a local facility, including a hospital, under the care of a midwife
• birth in a hospital supported by a local maternity care team including midwives, anaesthetists and consultant obstetricians. For some women this will be the safest option
4. Choice of place of postnatal care
As well as the choice of local options, a woman may choose to access maternity services outside her area with a provider that has available capacity. In addition, every woman will be supported by a midwife she knows and trusts throughout her pregnancy and after birth.
Key Issues for Gypsies and Travellers with Maternity Care
A recent report by the Maternity Alliance and published by Midwives Information and Resource Service - MIDIRS highlighted the following key issues and recommendations:
Key Issues
• Problems registering for Primary Care Services
G.Ps refusing Gypsies and Travellers temporary or permanent registration, and therefore access to antenatal care; a lack of awareness among Gypsy and Traveller women that they can self-refer to midwives.
• Inflexible Services and personnel
Failure to work effectively with people who have different lifestyles, needs and expectations of health and social services. Unfriendly, unhelpful and sometimes discriminatory attitudes of NHS staff towards Gypsies and Travellers.
• Information and literacy
Almost total lack of information materials on pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period geared towards Gypsies and Travellers, many of whom cannot read and write, as well as little or no information on how to access and use maternity services. These are compounded by Gypsy and Traveller women’s reluctance to attend antenatal classes and health professional’s failure to fill the information gap caused by this
• Lack of identity
Lack of monitoring for Gypsies and Travellers in the NHS or on ethnic monitoring forms, making them invisible to health service planners.
Main Recommendations
• Employ specialist Gypsy and Traveller health workers in areas with significant numbers of Travellers to help women access mainstream services and provide specialist on-site services where necessary.
• Provide information for Gypsies and Travellers on pregnancy, child birth and the post natal period, produced in consultation with Gypsies and Travellers and bearing in mind varying literacy levels.
• Ensure that NHS staff are aware of the difficulties Gypsies and Travellers have in accessing services and the consequences of this, by providing general training on cultural and ethnic issues to all staff and specialist training for staff in areas with large Traveller communities.
• Include Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers as separate categories on the Census so that national and local service planners are more aware of their numbers, whereabouts and needs.
• Increase the number of sites, permanent and transit, and ensure those sites have good facilities.
Further copies of the report above can be obtained from:
MIDIRS
9 Elmdale Road
Bristol
BS8 1SL
Customer Services Freephone: 0800 581009
Tel: 0117 925 1791
Fax 0117 925 1792
Email: editor@midirs.org
Website: www.midirs.org
Maternity Services in East Sussex
Newly delivered or pregnant women can self refer to either of the hospitals below, or contact Jan Mattis, Specialist Midwife on: 07795 498509. In an emergency contact the hospitals directly on:
Royal Sussex County Hospital: 01273 664793
Princess Royal Hospital: 01444 441881 ext 8414/8
Author: Zoe Matthews
2007
