safe staffing = safe care
Urgent action is needed to address chronic staffing shortages in maternity services that are putting women, babies and staff at risk. Too many midwives, maternity support workers and students are facing extreme pressures as a daily reality.
Our members tell us they are exhausted, overstretched and working in unsustainable conditions. 45% of midwives report burnout often or always, and only 16% feel there are enough staff to do their job properly. Midwives work an estimated 100,000 unpaid hours every week just to keep services functioning, with 87% saying their units are not safely staffed.
Speaking about the campaign, Gill Walton said: “The fundamental issue is that you cannot deliver safe maternity care with exhausted and overstretched staff. Well-rested maternity staff who have manageable workloads provide better, safer care. We need urgent, decisive action backed by ring-fenced, sustainable funding. Without safe staffing, care simply cannot be safe.”
RCM representatives are supporting our members in the workplace to raise these issues with their employers. These include breaches of the Working Time Directive and Agenda for Change contracts that try to protect both staff and patients from working conditions that put women and babies, as well as staff welfare, at risk. These include action on chronic understaffing, inadequate investment, and system-wide pressures that make current working patterns unsustainable.
Launching the Safe Staffing = Safe Care campaign in Parliament on 20 January 2026, the RCM is calling on Government to:
- Deliver safe staffing through dedicated, multi-year funding via a national maternity and neonatal action plan to end chronic understaffing in hospital and community settings.
- Protect a learning profession by providing midwives and maternity support workers with 52 hours of protected, salaried time to supervise students and complete essential continuing professional development.
- Amplify midwives’ voices by mandating a Director of Midwifery in every Trust and ensuring sufficient consultant midwives are in post as a non-negotiable standard.
- Improve health and prevention by funding protected time for midwives and MSWs to develop cultural competence and deliver safe, equitable care for every mother and birthing person.
- Invest in workplaces and birthplaces by prioritising poor maternity estates for urgent improvement through ring-fenced capital funding.
Everything you need to know about our Safe Staffing = Safe Care campaign
This Q&A explains why we’ve launched the Safe Staffing = Safe Care campaign, what we’re calling for, and how you can get involved.
What is the Safe Staffing = Safe Care campaign?
Safe Staffing = Safe Care is the RCM’s new UK-wide campaign calling on Government to take urgent action to tackle chronic staffing shortages across maternity services. The campaign is rooted in a simple truth: without safe staffing levels, care cannot be safe for women and babies.
Why is the RCM launching this campaign now?
Unsafe staffing has become a daily reality for many midwives, maternity support workers and students. Members are telling us they are working excessively long shifts without breaks, excessive on-call hours, under relentless pressure and being held personally accountable for systemic failures that are beyond their control.
Despite 748 recommendations on maternity safety over the past decade, progress has been slow and inconsistent. At the same time, maternal deaths in the UK are now 20% higher than they were ten years ago. Enough is enough. Urgent, decisive action is needed now.
The RCM has a long history of campaigning on how to make care safer and improve the working lives of our members. We have a track record of delivering improvement – both in national policies and through work in local trusts. But sadly there are huge issues that remain. The reviews led by Baroness Amos in England with other reviews in the devolved nations demonstrate that there has to be a step-change in the safety of maternity care, which can only be delivered with safe staffing.
This campaign has been in the making for months and builds on our previous work on safety and working conditions for midwives. We met with MPs Paul Waugh and Sam Rushworth at the Labour Conference last Autumn, who offered their support, giving us the opportunity to launch the campaign in UK Parliament on 20 January. We want to get this campaign right, and organising campaigns takes time. We’re pleased that we have now formally launched the campaign – we want it to reach the right people in the most impactful way, and it’s crucial that we get this right, particularly for you, our members.
What is the RCM calling on Governments to do?
The campaign sets out five clear, evidence-based asks for Governments in all four nations:
- Deliver safe staffing through dedicated, multi-year funding via a national maternity and neonatal action plan to end chronic understaffing in hospital and community settings.
- Protect a learning profession by providing midwives and maternity support workers with 52 hours of protected, salaried time to supervise students and complete essential continuing professional development.
- Amplify midwives’ voices by mandating a Director of Midwifery in every Trust and Board, and ensuring sufficient consultant midwives are in post as a non-negotiable standard.
- Improve health and prevention by funding protected time for midwives and MSWs to develop cultural competence and deliver safe, equitable care for every mother and birthing person.
- Invest in workplaces and birthplaces by prioritising poor maternity estates for urgent improvement through ring-fenced capital funding.
Who is the campaign aimed at?
This campaign is aimed squarely at Governments and national policymakers – particularly the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and his equivalents in the devolved nations – who have the power to deliver the funding, workforce planning and leadership structures maternity services urgently need. But we can’t do this without your help: our members’ voices matter most in this.
How was the campaign launched?
The campaign was launched in England at Westminster, where the RCM hosted a drop-in session for MPs and peers. Midwives, maternity support workers and student midwives spoke directly to politicians about the realities of working in understaffed services and the impact this is having on care and on their own wellbeing.
Around 50 MPs attended and heard first-hand from members who did not sugar-coat the reality of life on wards and in clinics.
What about the devolved nations?
We’re launching campaigns in Scotland and Wales together with manifestos for the Scottish and Welsh elections in February. We’ll also be stepping up activity in Northern Ireland ahead of elections in 2027. We have ongoing work with decision makers and providers across the devolved nations.
How are you going to make the UK Government stand up and listen?
The first step was speaking to politicians at our drop-in event and telling them about our five asks. We asked the MPs to get in touch with Secretary of State Wes Streeting, highlighting these asks and the conversations they had with our members. Putting it in front of the Secretary of State is integral to this campaign – and our next step will take this further with our members speaking to their local politicians and decision-makers. We will share further resources and next steps in the coming weeks and months.
What’s the impact of unsafe staffing on care?
There is overwhelming evidence that safe staffing saves lives. When services are understaffed:
- Midwives and MSWs are stretched too thin to provide the safe, compassionate care women and babies deserve
- Staff fatigue increases the risk of mistakes and missed care
- It’s harder to escalate concerns to senior colleagues and bring extra staff in to support care
- Time for learning, supervision and professional development is squeezed
- Inequalities in outcomes are exacerbated, particularly for women from marginalised communities
- It’s harder to attract maternity staff and keep them in the profession, losing vital expertise and causing a vicious cycle of understaffing and poorer care.
Unsafe staffing doesn’t just affect individual shifts – it undermines maternity safety and sustainability in the long term.
What message did the RCM take to MPs at Westminster?
Our message was clear: safe staffing must be central to any plan to improve maternity safety. Midwives cannot continue to carry the burden of a system that is underfunded, under-resourced and overstretched.
We are calling on MPs to take what they heard from members back to Government and to work with the RCM to demand urgent change.
We’re also having conversations with MSs in Wales ahead of the formal launch of the RCM Cymru manifesto.
How does this campaign support RCM members?
Safe Staffing = Safe Care is about backing our members and amplifying their voices. It challenges the narrative that places blame on individual professionals and instead shines a light on the systemic issues that are making safe care harder to deliver.
By pushing for sustainable funding, protected learning time, strong professional leadership and better working environments, this campaign aims to improve conditions for staff as well as outcomes for women and babies.
What happens next?
This is not a one-off moment. The RCM will continue to press the UK Government, work with politicians from across parties and in the devolved nations, and use evidence and members’ experiences to keep safe staffing firmly on the political agenda.
We stand ready to work constructively with Government – but we will not stop until meaningful, lasting change is delivered.
How can I support the campaign?
Members are at the heart of this campaign. You can support Safe Staffing = Safe Care by:
- Sharing your experiences of unsafe staffing with us – email your stories and experiences to safestaffing@rcm.org.uk
- Engaging with campaign content on social media
- Speaking to your local MP or MSP and political representatives about why safe staffing matters
- Supporting RCM activity locally and nationally as the campaign develops
Together we can make the case that safe staffing is not optional – it is essential for safe care.
Further resources
