Ireland’s first National Maternity Strategy

This  aims to improve safety & quality in general and standardise care across all units by recommending “Health and Wellbeing” approach giving babies the best start and improve women’s health by having women’s choices facilitated where possible as well as having better staff levels and facilities in maternity units and the community.

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar launched this first National Maternity Strategy – Creating a Better Future Together – a roadmap for improving services over the next 10 years.

This will build on good maternity services in Ireland and restore confidence in them by raising quality and make them as safe across all units, and create a partnership approaches with expectant mothers.

Minister Varadkar said:

I am delighted to launch the country’s first National Maternity Strategy.  It was my privilege to present it to Government for approval. This Government has made considerable investment in our maternity services in recent years and the Strategy provides further evidence of our very firm commitment to the development and improvement of services. 

It sets out a vision of maternity services that is about safety, quality and choice, and that places women very firmly at the centre of the service. I will advocate for it and work for its full implementation. In fact, we’ve already started.

The four priorities:

A Health & Wellbeing approach should be adopted to ensure that babies get the best start in life. Mothers and families to be supported and empowered to improve their health and wellbeing;

Women should have access to safe, high quality, nationally consistent, woman centred maternity care;

Pregnancy and birth should be recognised as a normal physiological process, and insofar as it is safe to do so, a woman?s choice in pregnancy and childbirth should be facilitated;

Maternity services should be well resourced, underpinned by strong, effective leadership, management and governance arrangements, and delivered by a skilled, competent workforce, in partnership with women.

The Strategy will be delivered through a new National Women & Infants? Health Programme, and care in each case will be offered by multi-disciplinary teams.

A new community midwifery service will be developed. Expectant mothers will be offered choices about their care during pregnancy and birth, ranging from home birth to specialised assistance, depending on the level of risk involved in each case.

The HIQA Report into the death of Savita Halappanavar recommended that a strategy be developed to implement standard, consistent models for the delivery of a national maternity service that reflects best available evidence, to ensure that all pregnant women have appropriate and informed choices, and access to the right level of care and support.

The first  step will be to develop and manage a detailed implementation plan and timetable, to deliver on the Strategy?s required actions.  The plan will be finalised within six months of the publication of the Strategy.

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