Coronavirus

Over the last few months, hundreds of people have contacted our advice line with serious concerns about their maternity care.

If you are pregnant and have questions or concerns about your care you can see answers to some of the most common questions on our Coronavirus FAQ. You can request advice about your rights in maternity care here.

If you are a maternity services leader or healthcare professional you can find out more about how to run a safe and rights respecting maternity service during a pandemic here.

Rights respecting care during the Covid pandemic

We have been working throughout the pandemic to track issues that women, birthing people and maternity professionals are experiencing, and to raise these with Trusts and policy makers. There has been an exemplary response to the crisis by many NHS Trusts. They have rapidly adjusted in very difficult circumstances to provide women and birthing people with continued access to safe and supportive maternity care that respects their choices.

However there has been an inconsistent, disproportionate and inhumane response by some NHS Trusts, and we have seen a number of Trusts making unlawful blanket decisions without taking into account women and birthing people’s individual individual circumstances. We have been particularly concerned about the following issues through the pandemic:

• Suspension of maternity services, including home birth and midwifery-led birth centres
• Permitting birth partners to support women and birthing people during labour, but also exceptions to wider hospital visitor restrictions at other times on a case by case basis.
• Restricted access to pain relief such as water
• Restricted access to maternal request caesareans
• Loss of continuity of care and the wider impact of COVID on women and birthing people from BAME communities and other marginalised groups

Birthrights is working hard to address these issues and to champion respectful care during pregnancy and birth by protecting human rights during the pandemic. You can read more about our call for all women and birthing people to receive safe, respectful and compassionate care during Coronavirus in our March 2020 statement and in our responses to relevant Parliamentary inquiries.

Programmes Director Maria Booker spoke to the International Maternity Experience 2020 conference about the rights issues we have seen through the pandemic and our tool for maternity leaders on how to run a safe and rights respecting maternity service.

Maria Booker – Women’s Rights and Choice – IME 2020 from Narrowcast Media Group on Vimeo.

We also spoke to openJustice as part of their series The Unlawful State: Stories from a Pandemic. 

This series by openJustice lifts up the voices of those whose lives are being disproportionately affected by the coronavirus crisis and find out what civil society are doing about it. Click here for more.

Correspondence with Trusts

Birthrights works to empower individuals contacting our advice line, Maternity Voices Partnerships and others with an interest, with the information they need to assess and challenge local decisions where appropriate (if you are affected by visitor restrictions see our template letter to Trusts). However where necessary we also write to Trusts and Local Maternity Systems and other organisations directly. The table below lists our correspondence with Trusts and others.

If you are a healthcare professional, find out more about running a safe and effective maternity service in the pandemic. Specialist guidance for midwives on supporting women and birthing people facing multiple disadvantage during the pandemic is available from Birth Companions.