Improving Equity in Maternity Services
How do we ensure a fairer service for black and global majority families using maternity services?
Why is this important?
There is lots of evidence internationally that women from Global Majority backgrounds are more likely to experience a variety of poorer outcomes across maternity services (and this is also the situation in City and Hackney), such as stillbirth or early neonatal death, premature delivery and small for gestational age babies.
Approach
The MATCH project brought together teams from the Homerton maternity services, statutory partners within social care and public health, voluntary sector services working in maternity settings, and residents & patients from the Maternity Neonatal Voice Partnership (MNVP), and parent groups to understand perspectives across the system.
Making the change
A series of workshops identified the priority areas for change:
- Drop in information hubs for women antenatal and postnatal (information, support, connect).
- Community doulas.
- Compulsory cultural awareness training co-produced with community and staff.
- More translation available within maternity units.
- More information at initial referral.
In March 2024 the MATCH Fund invited applications from eligible groups participating in the process to deliver projects in the priority areas for change that meet our programme impact aims. Two applications from the Homerton Maternity were funded for delivery from June 2024 to June 2025:
Birth Bridge
The Birth Bridge Project will establish a Community Doula service by providing training for 32 local people to become qualified Doulas to work alongside Midwives at the Homerton Hospital. Community Doulas will have a focus on representing and supporting women from Global Majority communities by providing access to high quality, culturally tailored doula support during their maternity experience.
Multilingual Maternity
Homerton have translated their maternity information leaflets into six community languages. Separate to this funding, they have also implemented compulsory cultural awareness training which came out of the MATCH process, and asked for input from communities into this training.
Contact: kyia.omoshebi@nhs.net for more information