- Conference
- Programme
- Day two
Conference Programme
Day one - 30 April
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- Plenary
Opening
- Gill Walton, Chief Executive, General Secretary and Chief Midwife, RCM
Caring with compassion: Addressing women’s needs through trauma-informed care
- Kaat De Backer, NIHR doctoral Research Fellow in maternal and perinatal mental health, Department of Women and Children's Health, King's College London
- Rachel Small, Clinical Matron, University Hospital Birmingham, The Ectopic Trist
- Nikki Wilson, CEO, Make Birth Better
Resources
Listening to lead: Driving service improvement through user engagement
- Katie Colville, Director of Midwifery, NHS Grampian
- Naomi Delap, Director, Birth Companions
- Amanda Gotch, Consultant Midwife, NHS Grampian
- Emma Mills FRCM, Consultant Midwife, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board
- Bryany Tweedale, Consultant Midwife, Cwm Taf Morgannwg UHB
- Kelly Phizacklea, Neonatal Service User Voice Representative, NHS England
Resources
- Solution series on Leadership
- MIDIRS search pack: M96 Institutional racism;
- MIDIRS search pack: MS41 LGBTQ+ parents
Ask the midwife: Using social media
- Sallie Ward, Lead Midwife, Humber and North Yorkshire Local Maternity system
Resources
Breaking barriers, building bridges: Delivering equity in maternity services
- Dr Anna Cox, Senior Lecturer in health and social care, University of Surrey
- Rebecca Jarman, Research Midwife, South London NIHR Research Delivery Network
- Dr Marie Tidball, Labour MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge
Navigating loss: Providing compassionate bereavement care
- Claire Braithwaite, Lead Bereavement Midwife, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals
- Melissa Crockett, NBCP NI Project Manager, Sands
- Victoria Holmes, MCS Bereavement Care Midwifery Matron, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
- Jo Lambert, Deputy Divisional Midwifery and Nursing Director, Lancashire Teaching Hospital
- Derin Webb, Midwife, Midwives Against Racism
Resources
RCM Fellows presentation
Zepherina Veitch lecture,
From the labor ward to global influence: A midwife’s journey
- Anna af Ugglas, Chief Executive, International Confederation of Midwives
- This lecture will explore the transformative journey of a midwife, from hands-on clinical practice in the labour ward in Sweden to making an impact on global maternal and newborn health. It will highlight her key experiences, challenges, and lessons learned along the way while emphasizing the broader role midwives play in shaping healthcare systems worldwide.
- Breakout 1
Collaborative care for maternity safety: Multidisciplinary approaches in action
- Bethan Jones, Perinatal Safety Champion, Welsh Ambulance Service University NHS Trust
- Shona Hamilton, Assistant Director for Women and Child Health SET, NHSCT
- Shelly Higgins, Consultant Midwife, Powys Teaching Health Board and NHS Wales Executive - Wales Maternity and Neonatal Strategic Network
- Cara Moore, Lead Midwife, Maternity and Neonatal Strategic Clinical Network for Wales
- Paula Morrison, Specialist Midwife for Social Complexities, Northern Health and Social Care Trust
- Deborah Pinkerton, Advanced Nurse Practitioner in Addictions, Northern Health and Social Care Trust
Resources
Maternal Immunisation: Helping to protect newborns from Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).
- Katie Byrne, Registered Nurse, Midwife and Lecturer.
Sponsored by - Headline sponsor Pfizer
During the ssession the speaker will discuss:
- The benefits of maternal vaccination and how it works
- The consequences of RSV infection in infants
- How we can effectively communicate the importance of maternal vaccination to expectant mothers
- Share experience about RSV vaccination
Resources
Prioritising care: Making maternity triage work
- Heledd Jones, Head of Midwifery, Liverpool Women's Hospital, University Hospitals Liverpool Group
- Rachel Mavers, Deputy Head of Midwifery, Liverpool Women's Hospital, University Hospitals Liverpool Group
- Adaline Smith, Deputy Director of Midwifery, East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust
Celox PPH® – the first-line device in the treatment of PPH
Supported by Kimal
- Univ. Professor Dr. Med. Wolfgang Henrich, Professor of Obstetrics & Director of the Department of Obstetrics, Charité, University Medical Center Berlin
At the upcoming 2025 RCM Conference, Professor Wolfgang Henrich from Charité Hospital, Berlin—one of Europe’s leading university hospitals—will deliver a highly anticipated presentation on CELOX PPH® – an innovative uterine haemostatic tamponade developed to control postpartum haemorrhage (PPH). Prof Henrich will highlight the rapid and effective capabilities of CELOX PPH®, showcasing its proven success in managing PPH and significantly reducing the need for invasive procedures such as hysterectomies. Drawing on extensive clinical evidence, he will demonstrate how CELOX PPH® has achieved high rates of haemostasis across various grades of bleeding, improving maternal morbidity and mortality outcomes globally. The session will also explore its ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and potential to transform emergency obstetric protocols. With its ability to address life-threatening haemorrhages quickly and safely, CELOX PPH® represents a groundbreaking advancement in maternal care. This presentation is set to be an essential event for healthcare professionals committed to improving obstetric care and enhancing maternal health.
Inspiring aspiration: supporting the next generation of midwives
- Juliet Borwell, Clinical Education and Practice Learning Senior Specialist, NHS England
- Judith Cutter, Midwifery Advisor for Wales, Nursing and Midwifery Council
- Pamela Galloway, Scotland Midwifery Advisor, Nursing and Midwifery Council
- Lisa Jesson, Deputy Lead Midwife, NHS England
- Tracey MacCormack, Assistant Director for Midwifery, Professional Practice Directorate, NMC
- Sinéad O'Kane, Midwifery Advisor for advanced practice Northern Ireland, Nursing and Midwifery Council
- Romie Rice, Midwifery Advisor for England, Nursing and Midwifery Council
Resources
- Breakout 2
Session
Partners in progress: Working together for better health, safety and wellbeing in the workplace
- Shelly Asquith, Health and Safety Policy Officer, Trades Union Congress
- Janet Ballintine, Midwife Delivery Suite Co-ordinator/Staff Side Lead, Birmingham Women's and Children's Hospital
- Emma Currer, National Officer Scotland, RCM Scotland
- Josephine Oamen, Clinical site manager, University College London Hospital
- Heather O'Shea, Infant Feeding Co-ordinator, Swansea Bay University Health Board
- Claire Parkin, Clinical Supervisor for Midwives, Swansea Bay University Health Board
- Lynne Ritchie, Charge Midwife & RCM Steward, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde
Resources
Session
Abstracts
- GROW midwives, Eden Chamberlain, Helen Russel, Rikkilea James and Kate Fearn, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals
- Changes in the number and proportion of women giving birth in UK midwifery units since 2016: a secondary analysis of data reported to the UK Midwifery Study System (UKMidSS). Tabitha Newman, Rebecca Dennis, Kate Fitzpatrick, Alexander Heazell, Sara Kenyon, Julia Sanders and Rachel Rowe. NIHR Policy Research Unit in Maternal and Neonatal Health and Care, National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford.
- Implementing the Connected Curriculum to build our midwifery community. Helen Bedford, Carole Lindsey, Erin Jackson, Dr Mike Parker, Dr Sarah Blower, University of York
Session
Abstracts
- Understanding facilitators and barriers in adapting physical activity during perinatal period by women from diverse communities, Professor Hora Soltani, Amy Furness & Dr Marlize De Vivo Sheffield Hallam University & Active Pregnancy Foundation
- Sharing knowledge: Increasing midwives' knowledge and confidence on physical activity in pregnancy. Dr Medbh Hillyard, Queen's University Belfast and The Active Pregnancy Foundation and Dr Marlize de Vivo, Sheffield Hallam University and The Active Pregnancy Foundation.
Session
Abstracts
- Peer support for infant feeding: Findings from the ABA-feed randomised controlled trial, Professor Kate Jolly, Cardiff University
- Maternity partners - experts in the community, Teri Gavin-Jones, Suffolk and Northeast Essex ICB
- Maternal Neonatal Voice Partnership: preferences and experiences around place of birth for people in the North East & Yorkshire region. Sarah Wall, Dr Tracey Cooper MBE, and Laura Smeaton, North East and Yorkshire region, maternity team.
Session
Start smart: Practical health prevention and promotion
- Shona Goudie, Policy and Advocacy Manager , The Food Foundation
- Katy Kay, Better Births Midwife, Hertfordshire and West Essex Local Maternity & Neonatal System and Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust
- Hilary Wareing, Director, Improving Performance in Practice
- Octavia Wiseman, Research Fellow, City St. George's, University of London
Resources
- Exhibition hall
Session
How to use your influence for great maternity workplaces and services
- Stuart Bonar, Public Affairs Advisor, RCM
- Bobby-Joe Campbell, Midwife and RCM activist
Join midwife and RCM activist Bobby-Joe and Stuart public affairs advisor to hear how powerful your voice can be. An important part of the RCM’s role is amplifying your voice to politicians, policy and other decision makers, we use the information you tell us in surveys, from local branch meetings and through leaders and activist networks to advocate for safe, quality maternity services and improved working conditions. Even more impactful than this is for these decision makers to hear from RCM members working in maternity services and midwifery education, that lived experience coupled with the fact that the best ideas often come from the workforce means you can make a massive difference. In this session you can learn from a Bobby-Joe a midwife who has experience of using her voice to make positive change and Stuart who can help you get started and will support you along the way.
Session
How to have a conversation around vaccines
- Dr Cath Grimley, Research Fellow, University of Warwick
- Jo Parsons, Assistant Professor in Health Science Research, University of Birmingham
If you have conversations in practice with pregnant women about vaccinations this workshop must not be missed. Recommending vaccines and encouraging uptake is a crucial part of the midwife’s public health role but often midwives feel underprepared for this. This workshop is designed to help you discover how to hold more positive and effective conversations. You will come away with a better understanding of what influences women’s decisions, and some top tips on how to make your recommendations impactful.
Session
Writing for publications
- Sara Webb FRCM, Head of MIDIRS
Come and find out how to share your knowledge and work to improve care. Whether it is work undertaken through study, service improvements or reflections on practice, all is worth publishing and MIDIRS is here to help. Publish your work, improve care, grow your CV and your career.
Session
Working with language barriers
- Benash Nazmeen, Assistant Professor in Midwifery, University of Bradford
Benash Nazmeen is a midwife, mentor and co-founder of The Association of South Asian Midwives. She currently works in midwifery education and is passionate about addressing health inequalities. This has included co-designing and running Cultural Competency and Safety Workhops for maternity healthcare professionals and contributing to the 2024 MBRRACE-UK perinatal confidential enquiry into the care of recent migrant women with language barriers who have experienced a stillbirth or neonatal death.
At this year’s conference Benash will draw on her expertise to deliver a vitally important workshop about the use of interpreters in maternity services. One of the biggest challenges maternity staff face is what to do when someone declines an interpreter. This half hour session will delve into what this response really means, providing the audience with invaluable insight and useful discussion points to help address this issue in practice so that midwives, support workers and students can deliver safe, personalised care to non- or limited English speaking families.
Session
What midwives need to know about preterm birth
- Jenny Carter, Senior Research Fellow and Senior Research Midwife, King’s College London
Jenny is a founder member of the UK Preterm Clinical Network, midwife specialist at St Thomas’ Hospital preterm surveillance clinic and co-author of Preterm Birth: A Handbook for Midwives (2024). Her PhD thesis focussed on risk assessment in threatened preterm labour and development of the QUiPP app. Preterm birth is a significant cause of neonatal mortality and morbidity, and has a potentially devastating lifelong impact on the whole family.
Jenny will deliver a workshop focussing on how to identify women at higher risk for preterm birth to ensure they receive timely referral to a preterm surveillance clinic and potentially lifesaving treatments. If you’ve ever wondered which cervical treatments really put women at risk or felt uncertain about what to do when a woman doesn’t know about what treatment she had, then this session is for you. The workshop provides the background knowledge and useful tips for how to effectively question women when risk assessing for preterm birth, enabling you to return to practice with increased confidence in referring the right women for preterm surveillance.
Session
Being a RCM workplace representative
- Nic Kacerovskis, RCM Health & Safety Rep, Nottingham
- Wendy Smith, RCM Steward, Ayrshire
- Bianca Armitage, RCM Steward, Aneurin Bevan
- Kate Shinkwin, RCM Learning Rep, Cardiff and Vale
Join RCM workplace representatives to hear the various different roles, you can meet a steward, health and safety rep and learning rep to learn about a day in the life of a rep.
Being an RCM Workplace Representative can help your personal and professional development, it’s a challenging role that is integral to fair, equitable, healthy and safe workplaces. As a rep the RCM supports you with advice, training and links you up with networks of other local reps.
All RCM reps are advocates for the RCM, recruit members in the workplace and attend meetings to hear from members and feedback.
- Stewards represent members individually and collectively and can attend local partnership or negotiating forums.
- Health and Safety reps promote and develop healthy and safe workplace, this includes access to breaks and hydration as well as the buildings that members work in, carry out inspections of workplaces and can attend the organisation’s health and safety committee.
- Learning reps assist and advise on training and development needs, promote opportunities to access learning, signposting to learning opportunities, organising learning and development events, supporting members to prepare for appraisals and NMC revalidation and welcome early career midwives to the workplace and RCM branch.
Session
Returning to work after maternity leave
- Julie Richards, Director Wales, RCM
- Rachel Evans, All Wales Breastfeeding Lead
- Sharon Davies, Assistant National Officer, RCM
The workshop will offer practical insights in how to support employees returning from maternity leave with their health and wellbeing as a targeted action of the RCM C4Y charter campaign. It will explore the opportunities with pregnancy planning, flexible working policies and share the recently developed all Wales Breastfeeding Charter for Workplaces in Wales. The workshop is intended to support activists, managers, workplaces and members to collectively work towards best practice for supporting their breastfeeding employees and how to meet the legal protection under health and safety and sex discrimination laws.
The all Wales Breastfeeding Strategic Steering Group and RCM Wales have recommended priorisation of this work during 2025. To find out more on how we can all collectively;
- Promote the wellbeing of employees by reducing the stress and anxiety related to balancing work and breastfeeding responsibilities. This support contributes to their overall physical and mental wellbeing, resulting in increased job satisfaction and productivity
- Attract and retain talented employees by demonstrating their commitment to work life balance and support for working parents. This can positively impact employee loyalty and engagement, leading to higher retention rates and a more diverse and inclusive workforce
- Enhance public image and reputation of organisations by demonstrating a commitment to family friendly policies, social responsibility and employee wellbeing to the wider community, including service users and other potential employees.
- Support the health and wellbeing of babies throughout the UK by supporting mothers to continue to breastfeed and ensure babies continue to benefit from breastmilk reducing the likelihood of illness and the need for medical interventions.
- Making cost savings to themselves and their employees as employers may benefit from reduced absenteeism and due to decreased infant illness. Additionally supporting breastfeeding aligns with initiatives to that promote sustainability and environmental responsibility contributing to long term cost savings and positive impact on the planet.
- RCM stand
MatDAT
- Claire Spencer, MatDAT co-author, Midwife and Infant Feeding Coordinator, Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospital
- Olivia Wiseman, MatDAT co-author, Midwife and Research Fellow, City St George’s, University of London
The Maternity Disadvantage Assessment Tool (MatDAT) was developed by a multiagency group including representatives from the Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP), National Children’s Bureau and Royal College of Midwives in response to the need for a standardised, holistic framework to support assessment of need and development of personalised and supporting maternity care plans for women and birthing people. The MatDAT is now being implemented by several UK maternity service providers and has received support from policymakers and MBRRACE-UK. Join Claire and Octavia for an update on progress with the tool and ask questions about its application in clinical practice.
Resources
Band 7 leadership course
- Dominique Gardner, Midwifery Clinical Lead,States of Guernsey
- Jessica Murray, Retention Support Midwife, Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust
- Caitlin Wison, Professional Advisor, Midwife (Education and Career Development) , RCM
The RCM’s Band 7 (Syndeo) leadership programme is a leadership behaviour, quality improvement, and networking programme. It has been designed for Band 7 leaders to help them connect better with themselves, their team, their colleagues and to grow healthier workplace cultures. In this hot topic session, you will hear from two of the participants about how this programme has helped them to develop their personal leadership skills.
Building your MidSoc with the RCM
- Ruby Handley-Stone, Professional Advisor, Midwife (Education), RCM
- Kurt Lee, SMF member
- Jake Morris, Administrator, MIDIRS LIS, MIDIRS
- Dawn Smith, SMF member
After the launch of the RCM MidSoc network in January 2025, many societies have come together across the UK to discover how they can support each other and develop their midwifery communities. This hot topic will take you through the journey of a successful MidSoc, using case studies and experiences of societies that have worked hard to nurture, grow and enhance their university’s society. Come and listen to gain advice, ask questions and be inspired!
MSW careers
- Chrissy Walsh IBCLC CW RCM Steward, MSW Advocate, H&S Rep RCM Steward Forum Co-chair
- Sally Morgan, MSW and RCM Activist, Tameside Hospital
Join maternity support workers to learn about the different ways roles can be developed providing interesting career pathways and benefits to maternity services. Whether its providing specialised support or managing a team being an MSW or MCA can open up lots of different opportunities. This session is a chance to hear directly about that but also to share your own experiences. You can also hear about how the RCM as your trade union and professional association that can support you in the workplace and more widely.
Journal clubs and literature searches
- Michelle Mckay, Nursing and Midwifery Course Director, Staffordshire University
Michelle’s commitment to engaging midwifery students in evidence-based care and fostering research skills led her to set up the Midwives-in-Training Research and Journal Review Club. Hosted by MIDIRS, the club integrates diverse topics and guest speakers, practical applications such as research appraisal, and recognises member achievements while emphasising the importance of embedding research at all levels of midwifery practice. Join Michelle’s Hot Topic session to find out more about the benefits of journal clubs and how they are an invaluable resource not just for students but also qualified staff and support workers.
To access the journal club go to: MIDIRS Journal clubs – Royal College of Midwives
- Exhibtion hall balcony
Activists and first time at conference reception
Join RCM staff for a networking reception for members who are attending conference for the first time and RCM activists. You will have an opportunity to meet RCM staff and activists including members of the steward forum.
Wales and Northern Ireland reception
Join RCM staff for a networking reception for members based in Wales and Northern Ireland. You will have an opportunity to meet staff from these country teams.
Scotland and student midwives reception
Join RCM staff for a networking reception for members based in Scotland and fellow student midwives You will have an opportunity to meet staff from Scotland and members of the student midwife forum.
