Background

MVP is an NHS working group made up of a team of service users and their families, commissioners and maternity health care providers. Originally a Maternity Services Liaison Committee, MVP was relaunched at Carlisle Business Centre in March 2018.

MVP have a minimum meeting quota of 3 main meetings per year (partner agencies including Head of Maternity and Community Midwifery teams) and also 3 meetings with Voluntary and Community Sector Partners (with attendance from parents and volunteers).

The MVP strategic priorities are: Breastfeeding, Infant Mortality , Continuity of Carer, Perinatal Mental Health , Seldom Heard Groups and Healthy Lifestyle and these were set prior to the launch and will be renewed in 2020

What we did and who was involved

The different scenarios included a planned home birth, a labour ward birth and a mother also shared her two differing birthing experiences, and a third mother shared the story of her first birth which was an unplanned caesarean in an emergency situation and then her most recent birth which was a planned caesarean birth.

Women shared their thoughts and feelings around the support they had receive from maternity service staff, also their family and friends and how discussed how their birth situations had impacted on bonding with their babies.

Outcomes

The session was attended by 18 women from a wide variety of backgrounds (some were mums, others had no children, some were from VCSO organisations , some were health service staff , two were CGG commissioners and 2 were student midwives. Ethnicity backgrounds included South Asian, White, African and Iraqi.

Three mothers shared their birthing experiences and how these had impacted on their physical and emotional health and also bonding with their babies.

At the end of the session there was an opportunity to network and women (both professional and non-professional) talked to each other about their differing birthing stories and experiences.

Comments and feedback on maternity healthcare services were fed into the Grassroots channels.

What next

Engaging People staff will continue to visit mothers and families to gather feedback and comments gathered on maternity and health services will be forwarded through Grassroots channels.

Women and families will be recruited for a Walk the Patch program in Spring 2020. This will involve collecting direct feedback from maternity users on antenatal and postnatal wards of a maternity unit , thereby providing a snapshot of womens experience of care on a certain day which will be shared with maternity midwifery teams.

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Case Study Birth Stories November 2019