The midwifery team at The University of Salford is actively engaged in working to create an inclusive, decolonised, and anti-racist curriculum to support students in their journey to becoming culturally safe, inclusive and compassionate future midwives. The team acknowledge that decolonising the curriculum is a continuous process and requires ongoing change, challenge and commitment. The first step to this was a commitment from all staff members to enhance their knowledge on social justice, culturally safe practice and the importance of decolonising the curricula; allowing for deeper comprehension of the history of racism and its effects on the current maternity system, higher education institutes and students. All staff undertake intensive maternity cultural safety and decolonising the curriculum training annually and have access to training packages such as the Union Black Training. The midwifery team has appointed EDI leads to develop a decolonising the curriculum strategy and is currently reviewing the ethnicity attainment gap.

Annual cultural safety training has been implemented within the new curriculum across all years in all courses. Supporting this training are regular restorative circles facilitated by the Professional Midwifery Advocates within the team, holding space to explore the effects of racism in maternity care, white privilege, unconscious bias and how the intersectionality of race, class, economic status and access to opportunities combine to negatively affect women and birthing people. Students have weekly access to a student collective for Black, Asian and racially minoritised students, intended to create a safe space to share lived experience and explore the effects of microaggressions and foster an increased sense of belonging.  

The curriculum content has been diversified and the euro-centric representation of knowledge is challenged within lectures. Simulation equipment is available in darker skin tones, and scenarios are utilised to teach students the skills of trauma informed care. Throughout the programme, students will have active bystander training, so they are equipped with the necessary skills to challenge discrimination in the workplace. All case studies include the person’s ethnicity and chosen pronouns alongside the clinical scenario, encouraging students to consider how their identity may affect their experience of care.

To assess and evaluate this learning, summative assessments throughout the course incorporate aspects of diversity, intersectionality and the demonstration of the role of the midwife in providing holistic, culturally safe care. Assessments are co-created and reviewed by service users to ensure accurate, culturally aware representations of the communities, including creating clinical skills viva scenarios in partnership with service users. The assessment criteria for each assessment requires students to consider the principles of cultural safety and inclusivity within their work, and they are graded on their ability to do so.  

Students complete a case study assignment which encompasses and explores the lived experience of a Black birthing person with multiple intersecting identities accessing maternity care. The assignment requires students to consider how Black and Brown people’s experiences of maternity care intersect with transgender parents experiences, requiring them to take an intersectional perspective on how midwives can provide inclusive and culturally safe care. This assessment, which followed cultural safety and inclusivity training, demonstrated no award gap.