Earlier this month I had the pleasure of meeting with representatives of the Midwifery Continuity of Carer Service (MCoC) and mothers they have supported at The Golden Crane pub to mark International Midwives Days. At the meeting, and in subsequent correspondence, I heard lots of positive stories of the team’s impact and also of concern following recent advice that the service would be suspended.
After that meeting, II wrote to Matthew Trainer, Chief Executive of the Barking, Havering & Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, about the future of the service, sharing with him the tremendous feedback we had collated from residents who had benefited from the work of the midwifery team.
Matthew subsequently arranged a meeting with me the following week, along with the Trust’s senior nursing team, to go through our concerns and set out why the decision has been taken to suspend their Midwifery Continuity of Carer (MCoC) service. He has since sent me a letter to confirm that discussion and a copy of the Chief Executive’s response can be accessed below this article.
Constituents may be aware of the recent release of the Ockenden Review, a comprehensive, independent report into maternity services that has led to a series of recommendations on how NHS maternity care can be improved for women across the country. This included a recommendation that NHS Trusts review and suspend MCoC programmes until such a point that they can be confident of minimum safe staffing levels across their own maternity services.
Matthew explained that while mums in Upminster and Cranham have been receiving outstanding care, with a ratio of one midwife to 36 women, in other parts of the Trust, a single midwife is having to care for 150 women. As such, Matthew believes it is essential to redeploy midwifery resource more evenly across the Trust area and also to focus it in parts of the community where outcomes have proven the poorest.
I have spoken previously to him about the need to improve the quality of maternity care, sharing with him some of the issues I personally encountered as well as experiences of other mothers, and I did so again in our most recent discussion. I know that he shares the strength of my feelings on this topic, and I expressed my hope that MCoC services resume as soon as can be achieved after the Ockenden recommendations have been fulfilled. That is the Trust’s intention and to that end, I offered my support in addressing any issues that I can help with in relation to attracting more midwives into BHRUT and speeding up the training process. They have put forward a couple of practical suggestions on how I might do that and I have already written to the Royal College of Midwives to this effect.
Unfortunately, in the meantime, Matthew confirmed that he would not be revisiting the decision to pause the Upminster & Cranham service. He believes that that decision is right and necessary if better care is to be provided to women across the breadth of the Trust’s patient base. An offer has been made to continue the MCoC programme for those women who are over 28 weeks’ pregnant.
I recognise the disappointment that the community will feel at this decision and that it has not been possible to secure the immediate future of the Upminster & Cranham Midwives team, who have provided such exemplary, personalised care to local mums. I hope service users will find Matthew’s letter helpful in better understanding the reasons behind his decision and feel reassured by efforts to improve maternity services across the board in a way that will allow for the MCoC programme's eventual reinstatement.
