Today, the Royal College of Midwives is launching its Safe Staffing = Safe Care campaign in England – demanding policymakers to take urgent action for women and babies. RCM Chief Executive Gill Walton outlines why we’ve launched the campaign and the five important actions from Government. 

All midwives remember that magical moment when you receive your PIN – and the first time you walk into a ward and into a clinic as a newly qualified midwife. I still remember that moment so clearly!  It’s what we trained so hard for and represents commitment and hope. For many of us, becoming a midwife was a lifelong ambition. 

We know it’s not an easy role – in fact, it’s far more than a job. Midwifery is a vocation and we care for women at some of the most significant and emotional moments in their lives. We don’t come into this profession blind to the reality that there will be difficult, emotionally-charged days. When things go well it can be deeply rewarding but when things go wrong, the impact can be devastating. 

Too often, however, the pressure created by understaffing and underinvestment falls directly on your shoulders.  Maternity safety is frequently in the spotlight, yet midwives are made to feel responsible for failures that are clearly systemic. That’s not fair and it’s not right. It is time to be clear with Government and say: enough is enough. 

This week, the RCM is launching our Safe Staffing = Safe Care campaign. We’re calling on policymakers to take urgent action for women and babies – because without safe staffing, they and their families pay the price. And so do midwives and the wider maternity workforce. 

When a midwife is working an excessively long shift because there simply aren’t enough staff on the rota, when they haven’t had the chance to take a break, and then have to drive 45 minutes home exhausted – only to return the next day expected to be bright, refreshed and ready to care for women again – we have to ask: how is this acceptable in this day and age? How can tired and undervalued staff provide the safest possible care?

Women, families and maternity staff deserve safe, high-quality maternity services. Baroness Amos’s initial report exposed deep, systemic failings in maternity care that have caused avoidable harm to women and babies. Yet despite 748 recommendations made over the past decade, progress has been painfully slow. 

The Government knows the scale of the challenge. Launching further inquiries will not drive the improvement needed today. What’s missing is urgent, decisive action – backed by ring-fenced, sustainable funding. The RCM is ready to work with Government to deliver that change, starting now. 

As part of our Safe Staffing = Safe Care campaign, we have five clear asks for the Government: 

• Safe staffing: Deliver dedicated, multi-year funding through a national maternity and neonatal action plan to end chronic midwifery and maternity support worker understaffing, ensuring safe care in hospital and community settings. 

• A learning profession: Protect the future of maternity services by providing midwives and MSWs with 52 hours of protected, paid time to supervise students and complete essential continuing professional development, supporting safe, high-quality care. 

• Amplified midwives’ voices: Guarantee maternity services are led by professional expertise, with a Director of Midwifery mandated in every Trust and sufficient consultant midwives in post to lead safe, personalised care as a non-negotiable standard. 

• Improved health and prevention: Ensure all midwives and MSWs have protected, funded time to develop cultural competence, so everyone is equipped to deliver safe, equitable care to every mother and birthing person. 

• Our workplace, your birthplace: Prioritise poor maternity estates for urgent investment, with ring-fenced capital funding to clear fixable maintenance backlogs and create high-quality workplaces and birthplaces. 

Today (Tuesday 20 January), we are hosting a drop-in session at Westminster for MPs, with RCM members there to speak directly to policymakers about their lived experience. We’ll be honest and won’t be sugar-coating the reality. We don’t want women to be anxious about maternity services, they deserve safe care but we must speak up.  Our members will tell MPs exactly what it’s like on wards and in clinics, and the toll this is taking on their working lives. 

Putting the voices of midwives, MSWs and student midwives directly in front of Parliament is vital. We want MPs to listen, to understand and to take these concerns to the Secretary of State, urging him to act on these five issues without delay. 

We’re standing by the side of our members. Your voices and your experiences matter more to us than you’ll ever know. Please keep sharing them. We are listening, and we are doing everything we can within our means to drive real, lasting change. While much of that work happens behind the scenes, please be assured that the future of midwifery, and its impact on you and on the lives of women and babies, is at the heart of everything we do every single day. 

• We will be launching this campaign in Scotland and Wales in the coming months as part of the RCM Manifestos.