NHS North West London helps transform maternity services across the UK

The NHS in North West London has today launched a new digital toolkit to help other local NHS regions transform their maternity services.

This new toolkit follows work we have been doing to improve the clinical outcomes and care experiences for women and families in our local area.

We are pleased to announce that we are now ready to share our learning and offer our help to allow other NHS regions to adopt and adapt the improvements we have made for women and families in the rest of the country. 

To date our achievements include:

• Introducing more women to ‘continuity of care’ – meaning that women are assigned one dedicated midwife who acts as their first point of contact and provides continued care and support throughout their pregnancy, birth and the first few weeks of settling in with baby at home.
• The launch of the North West London Mum and Baby app – a personal guide for pregnancy, birth and beyond. 
• A reduction in complicated births, shorter stays in hospital after giving birth and more women breastfeeding when leaving hospital.
• A collection of information booklets – for pregnancy, birth and the first few weeks of parenthood.

In late 2016, North West London were chosen as one of seven ‘Early Adopter’ sites across the country, receiving funding from NHS England to test a range of new and innovative ways of working as recommended in the National Maternity Review ‘Better Births’.

Victoria Cochrane, Interim Director of Midwifery, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said:

“When we started this journey our vision was to lead the way in providing first class, safe maternity care that offers choice, continuity and has the family at the heart of everything we do. The hope is that by sharing the process and our learning as to how we got there that women, midwives and clinicians across the country will also get to experience all that we have set out to achieve. Following use of the toolkit, we’re really excited to see how NHS maternity services in other areas begin to transform”.  

The last few years have been really exciting as we have watched our maternity services grow and improve with more and more women telling us about their positive experiences of being pregnant and giving birth in North West London. 

Rebekah Anton, first time mum who received maternity care at St Mary’s Hospital in North West London said: “I was nervous about all that pregnancy, labour and motherhood would entail. The ‘continuity of care’ I received from my midwife supported not only myself but also my husband to feel more confident and better prepared heading into the birth room and parenthood.”

A copy of the toolkit can be found here. To find out more about maternity services in North West London or if you are interested in working with us please contact maternity.nwl@nhs.net.