Maternity Strategy Refresh Insight review

A review into the draft priorities for the Maternity Strategy refresh.

Period: December 2020 – February 2021

Brief description of the project

A maternity strategy informs the public on what improvements we will be undertaking to make the experience of mothers and their families the best it can be.  The current Leeds maternity strategy (2015-2020) is being refreshed.  The purpose of this insight paper was to check that the draft priorities have been informed by what local women and families are telling us is important to them, and to establish if there are any gaps in our understanding that may need further engagement.

Where did we get the insight from?

We gathered insight from 17 local and national sources including:

  • Maternity and Neonatal Services Consultation Report – May 2020
  • My Pregnancy During COVID-19” MVP survey
  • Maternity Mental Health Services in Leeds
  • Whose Shoes event (Bereavement)
  • The Critical 1001 Days: Exploring Parental Cognitions amongst the Bangladeshi Community in Leeds
  • Women with learning difficulties who have experienced pregnancy in Leeds
  • Maternity Event with Young Parents
  • Dads & Co-parents survey

What did we find out?

You can read the full engagement report here:

Maternity Strategy Refresh (382KB)

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Personalised Care

  • Continuity of care is key
  • Home from home feel

Perinatal Mental Health

  • More personalised care especially for mums with learning difficulties
  • Taboo/stigma felt, especially in the Bangladeshi community

Reconfiguration

  • Maternity services should all be on one site
  • Parking nearby is important

Reducing Health Inequalities

  • Problems with interpreters not always being available
  • Poor communication/understanding negatively affect people with learning disabilities

What did we do?

Whilst acknowledging that it is impossible to seek the views of everyone, there was sufficient evidence that the draft refresh priorities are aligned with what is important to the mums and families involved in previous maternity-related engagements, and therefore we felt that no further engagement is needed. We invited the Maternity Voices Partnership working group to review the draft insight paper to seek their feedback and to sense check the report with any missing communities.  They were happy with the report and did not feel that anything was missing or hadn’t been highlighted. The MVP also acknowledged that there are some gaps in terms of engagement from some communities, namely LGBTQ, and Gypsy and Traveller communities across the city and together we are working on trying to improve feedback from these communities.