Released on: 27 October 2015
In response to the Royal College of Midwives report, ‘The State of Maternity Services’, Elizabeth Duff, Senior Policy Adviser, NCT said:
“The findings of this report are very concerning as many of the problems women experience around childbirth are caused by a lack of midwives. Recent NCT research¹ found 13% of women did not receive one-to-one care during labour and 20% did not see a midwife as often as they needed in the days and weeks after birth. Given the high number of midwives nearing retirement age, these problems are likely to get worse.
“The failure to pick up the vital signals of conditions such as pre-eclampsia or postnatal depression put the health of both mother and baby at risk. Urgent action is needed to ensure there are enough midwives to meet safe staffing levels.”
¹The survey, ‘Support Overdue: women’s experiences of maternity care’, was carried out by NCT and The National Federation of Women’s Institute (NFWI) and examined the experiences of 5,500 women who had given birth in the years 2009-2013 (over 4,000 of these births were in 2012).
