Healthwatch influences North East London Local Maternity and Neonatal System Equity and equality strategy

Healthwatch influences North East London Local Maternity and Neonatal System Equity and equality strategy

East London has the highest birth rate in the United Kingdom. Our health-care systems must adjust to this while continuing to provide the greatest possible outcomes for mothers and babies. Healthwatch Barking and Dagenham worked with the 7 Healthwatch services across North East London and looked into the experiences of patients from minority or marginalised groups when accessing and experiencing maternity services. In collaboration with NHS North East London and Maternity Mates, Healthwatch influences the North East London Local Maternity and Neonatal System Equity and equality strategy.

Together, we engaged with maternity service users, their representatives, and maternity staff by using face-to-face interviews, focus groups, and online surveys.

Overall, we have gained over 952 survey responses, 87 in-depth interviews focusing on maternity units, 76 advocate survey responses, and 5 focus groups with Somali and Pakistani communities. Healthwatch Barking and Dagenham collected 72 responses in the borough.

Our key findings included:

• The findings showed that different communities perceive maternity services significantly differently. For example, BAME populations were more likely to provide negative feedback about their hospital experience than other communities.

• Service users who had a disadvantage in using technology perceived that services were less efficient than in other communities.

• Young mothers face a greater number of obstacles when trying to access GP services. They are also more inclined to seek treatment at A&E or an early pregnancy unit, and they are more likely to require emergency caesarean sections.

• 30% of those who experienced pregnancy loss chose not to communicate their grief with anyone.

• Language barriers and cultural issues are the biggest challenges faced by the service users.

• Co-production of maternity services is certainly desirable, but it requires a different strategy.

Our impact:

This has influenced the local maternity strategy and national strategy to improve maternity services. Engagement for this project is now completed and a NEL report has been published.

North East London Maternity Equity an Equality Task and Finish Group developed an ongoing plan based on our results and feedback. The action plan is designed around the topics highlighted during our engagement work, which include engagement, information sharing and trust, and consent.

Some of the actions that will be implemented reported by NEL include

• Make localised content available, working across Trusts and planning for the year ahead with scheduled content on service updates and helpful information at appropriate intervals, as well as sharing unplanned messages and proactive information via push notifications.

• Segmented data by ethnicity and income demographics to understand information these groups most regularly access. Scope translating of certain general articles and localised content into appropriate community languages.

• Conduct a collateral audit to identify what material is currently available and in what formats (leaflets, booklets, etc.), as well as any easy read or translated versions.

• Develop and provide accessible document to be used within maternity teams detailing Local Authority led support services including children’s centres, baby banks and foodbanks, as well as place based social prescribing teams and how to refer so staff can better support and signpost pregnant women to access certain services.

Please click on the links to read the full report: