Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services
On 30 March 2023 NHS England published its three year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services.
The plan sets out a series of actions for Trusts, ICBs and NHS England in order to improve the safety and quality of maternity and neonatal services with a focus on personalised care and equity and equality.
It combines a number of existing maternity and neonatal requirements including the original Better Births (2016) report, the NHS Long Term Plan (2019), Ockenden (2020 and 2022), East Kent (2022), Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle, CSNT requirements, MBRRACE reports, BAPM 7 neonatal ambitions and equity/race related guidance.
The report sets out the 12 priority actions for Trusts and systems for the next three years, across four themes:
- Listening to women and families with compassion
- Supporting the workforce
- Developing and sustaining a culture of safety
- Meeting and improving standards and structures.
NHS Maternity Services want to ensure care is personalised and that service users have informed choice. Voices of all women and pregnant people including those from diverse backgrounds must be heard, and services will work closely with all service users to collaboratively plan, design and improve care.
What are the goals/ key deliverables of the workstream?
- Empower maternity and neonatal staff to deliver personalised care by providing the time, training, tools, and information, to deliver the ambitions of Personalised Models of Maternity Care.
- Monitor the delivery of personalised care by undertaking regular audits and seeking feedback from women and pregnant people.
- Commission for and monitor implementation of personalised care for every woman
- By 2023/24, all pregnant people will be able to access their maternity notes and information through their smart phones or other device
- Invest to ensure availability of bereavement services 7 days a week by the end of 2023/24. This will help trusts to provide high quality bereavement care including appropriate post-mortem consent and follow-up.
- Compassionate and high-quality care for bereaved families including appropriate accommodation, which is easily accessible but separate from maternity and neonatal units
- Achieve the standard of the UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI) for infant feeding, or an equivalent initiative, by March 2027. Only 57% of babies in England are currently born in an accredited ‘baby friendly’ environment
- Voices of all women including those from diverse backgrounds must be heard, and services should work closely with all service users to collaboratively plan, design and improve care.
The Norfolk & Waveney Local Maternity & Neonatal System will achieve this through five main projects:
- Personalised Models of Maternity care
- Care for Bereaved Families
- Personalised Care & Support Plans
- Postnatal Improvement
- Infant Feeding
What successes have the workstream had previously?
Personalised Models of Maternity Care – Community Hubs
Hubs have been set up to support the community provision for maternity services and, to support the implementation of midwifery continuity of care. The LMNS supported the hubs project from 2019 to 2023 and remain in contact with the trusts on the delivery of MCoC going forward.
Maternal Medicines Network
This has been embedded well within trusts. There has been an increase in referrals, improved MDT working and collaboration across the region with positive feedback from women and families on the improved service provision.
What are the workstreams focuses now?
Personalised Models of Maternity care
This project focuses on improving 2 aspects of care:
- Maternity models of care – organising maternity care pathways to facilitate continuity of carer, ideally across all 3 elements of care, allowing trusting relationships between women and maternity care givers.
- Antenatal education – to prepare, educate and empower women and birthing people on all aspects of their pregnancy, birth and postnatal journey supporting informed choice and decision making.
Care for Bereaved Families
This project aims to standardise and improve all aspects of care for bereaved families, using local learning and service user feedback to guide the improvement. This will include ensuring appropriate services and accommodation are available 7 days per week.
Personalised Care & Support Plans
A revised copy of the PCSP is being developed as a tool to support women and pregnant people in making choices that are tailored to their needs and wishes, alongside their health care professional. It facilitates proactive personalised conversations throughout the antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal journey which focus on what matters to them, considering clinical needs as well as their wider health and wellbeing.