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Maternity reform fails to deliver

Midwives have given strong support to the recent parliamentary health select committee call to give women more choice about where and how they receive maternity care.

But Royal College of Midwives general secretary Dame Karlene Davis has particularly emphasized the MPs’ belief that maternity service have to be improved for asylum seekers, refugees, mental health patients and women with special needs.

The MPs, who felt that current maternity services over-medicalise birth, said choice in care currently risks being just ‘choice for the articulate middle classes.’

The RCM general secretary added: ‘Maternity services must find a way of recruiting midwives from all ethnic communities in order to provide appropriate support for women and their families.’

Highly critical of current maternity care, the select committee report, Choice in Maternity Services, said barriers to home birth were ‘wholly unacceptable’ and all midwives should be trained in home birth. Meanwhile, local health services should take account of the likely impact on women’s long term health before they consider closing small, midwifery-led maternity units. Much more government research was needed to measure the effectiveness of services and on degree of real choice.

Julia Drown MP, chair of the health select committee’s maternity services group, said the report reflected ‘our disappointments that extensive reforms to government policy on maternity services made ten years ago have not resulted in a greater degree of choice and control’ for women.