Improving maternal outcomes, and addressing the safety of women and their babies, is one of the most important challenges facing maternity systems today.
The importance of maternal safety
Violence of any form during pregnancy and the childbearing year can result in devastating and traumatic experiences and outcomes for women and their babies. When it comes to maternal safety, women are especially vulnerable if they have experienced trauma or harm in the build-up to or during their pregnancy. It could be related to experiences of FGM, sexual assault, domestic violence, or due to a need for greater cultural safety in maternity systems.
There is a great need for more care to be trauma-informed – assessing every person as potentially carrying trauma and ensuring that their needs are understood. Harm can result when good communications are not established and maintained in maternity care.
We recognise the need for women to understand their rights, the choices they can make, and understand consent in order to act as agents in their own safety through their maternity journey. This vision inspired Best Beginnings and White Ribbon Alliance UK to apply to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport for funds through the 2021-2023 Tampon Tax Fund and led to the realisation of an 18-month programme of work called ‘Safer Beginnings’. Register your place FREE below.
Safer Beginnings Conference for Service Users and Charities Working in Maternity Co-delivered by Best Beginnings and White Ribbon Alliance
> Register here –Â https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/safer-beginnings-conference-for-service-users-and-charities-tickets-486892678107
Safer Beginnings Conference for healthcare professionals and educators working in Maternity
>> Register here –Â https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/safer-beginnings-conference-for-healthcare-professionals-and-educators-tickets-487199395507?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
About Safer Beginnings
Safer Beginnings is a programme with 18 delivery partners working in co-production to create new resources. These resources support health care professionals and people in their care to increase their knowledge and access to support to reduce incidents of violence and harm during maternity and the early years.
The outcomes from the Safer Beginnings programme will culminate in two free-to-attend conference dissemination events in March 2023. These events aim to share the learnings and resources of the programme and invite both service users, charities and health care professionals to explore these new resources and gain the skills to begin to use them with people in their care.
The conferences will showcase some exciting new co-produced resources for parents, families and for professionals. Our aims are to equip professionals with the tools they need, to build the confidence of parents and ultimately to reduce the incidence and impacts of harm and trauma, thereby improving outcomes for mums and babies.
Safer Beginnings aims
Safer Beginnings aims to improve maternity outcomes and the safety of women through developing specialist information, services and interventions. These are tailored for women who have experienced, or who are at a higher risk of trauma or harm.
One key driver for our work has been to address the fact that Black, Asian and ethnic minority women and birthing people experience disproportionate adverse outcomes in maternity care. The reasons are multi-factorial but include barriers to accessing formal maternity services, endemic structural racism, poor maternal education, poor health literacy and deprivation.
These additional barriers for Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities highlights an urgent need for specialist information, services and interventions for women from these communities. We believe that this can be accomplished through a combination of resources for professionals and enabling parents to feel confident about their choices and rights.
Our approach
Our project has sought to address the danger of disrespectful, abusive or coercive treatment of women and birthing people – whether due to violence, assault or abuse that has impacted on them outside of their maternity care or due to poor care in the maternity system. We wanted to draw attention to violations of women’s autonomy, human rights and reproductive health and to find ways to equip women and maternity care professionals to navigate these sensitive topics in a trauma-informed way to both ensure that existing harms or trauma are not exacerbated or triggered and also to help prevent harms or trauma from happening inside the maternity care system.
We know that individual voices and experiences are vital to improving maternity care. By increasing understanding of how culturally specific inequalities related to obstetric and domestic abuse/ violence and FGM/FGC informed care affect women, we have co-produced resources that can empower women from all backgrounds – and in particular those from Black, Asian and minority backgrounds – to seek safety.
Resources
Using a co-production method, the Safer Beginnings programme has led to the creation of the following new resources:
- For parents:
- In January 2023 a new Safer Beginnings section will be added to the Discover library of the Baby Buddy parenting app, created by Best Beginnings. Co-produced films and bite-sized articles will help improve maternal safety and outcomes for new and expectant parents and their babies. New content offers support, guidance and practical tools for parents – particularly those who have experienced trauma or harm – during pregnancy, labour, birth and afterwards. Topics covered include: self-advocacy in maternal care; emotional safety; stress responses; FGM; sexual abuse; and domestic abuse.
- For professionals:
- All4Maternity has created a new e-learn module for midwives and health care professionals which will help inform and guide those who want to give the best care possible and work in a way that is free from harm.
- For families:
- For Baby’s Sake has created a new tool called an Emotional Safety Plan. The Emotional Safety Plan is a tool that will support the whole family including mum’s, dad’s, co-parents, or non-birthing partners to record what they may need to feel emotionally safe before, during and after birth.
White Ribbon Alliance (WRA) UK strongly believes that improving the safety of giving birth includes not only short-term physical outcomes but long-term emotional and psychological ones too. WRA also believes that unless the same concern and consideration is given to health care professionals’ well-being and emotional safety, cycles of violence and distress will continue to occur. Respectful care must include those providing care too. WRA has also produced a new Free From Harm (FFH) resource, intended not only to raise awareness of the need to eliminate violence and minimise harm in the perinatal period, but to equip health care professionals (HCPs) with the information and tools to do so. It also aims to help midwives recognise when their own human rights are not being upheld and understand how this impacts them.
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If you’re interested in learning more about the Safer Beginnings resources, please join us at one of our conferences.
Safer Beginnings Conference for Service Users and Charities Working in Maternity Co-delivered by Best Beginnings and White Ribbon Alliance
>> Register here – https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/safer-beginnings-conference-for-service-users-and-charities-tickets-486892678107
Safer Beginnings Conference for healthcare professionals and educators working in Maternity
>> Register here –Â https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/safer-beginnings-conference-for-healthcare-professionals-and-educators-tickets-487199395507?aff=ebdsoporgprofile