The Royal College of Midwives has responded to Baroness Amos’ interim report on maternity services, calling for urgent action on safe staffing and proper investment after the review highlighted systemic failings across maternity care.
The report, which examined maternity services found that despite 748 recommendations made over the past decade, change has been “too slow.”
Royal College of Midwives Chief Executive Gill Walton, said:
“Baroness Amos’ report paints a deeply distressing picture. Every woman and baby should have a positive experience of maternity care. Yet too many have experienced devastating consequences from systemic failings.
“Midwives are committed to safe, compassionate, woman-centred care but chronic understaffing and inadequate resources are undermining their ability to deliver it.
“The RCM has been raising concerns for years about these issues, the lack of urgency to improve maternity services and the absence of ring-fenced funding for improvements.
“Baroness Amos is right to ask why change has been ‘too slow’ when 748 recommendations have been made over the past decade. The Government already has the evidence it needs. It knows the scale of the challenge and the solutions that will make the biggest difference.
“We now hope to work constructively with the Government through the Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce to ensure these findings lead to meaningful action. Women, families, midwives and maternity teams have waited long enough for the safe, high-quality maternity services they deserve.”
