Last Modified: 4:24pm 07/03/2023

Maternity Services

Our pledge to you

You and your baby are the reason we are here and we aim to provide the best care possible for you.

While you are in the care of the maternity team at MKUH, we will do our very best to ensure that:

• The care we provide is evidence based and tailored to meet your individual needs.
• Your privacy and dignity is upheld throughout the duration of your labour.
• We will treat you with respect, kindness and compassion.
• We will communicate with you every step of the way so that there is a clear and open dialogue between us, and there is transparency in all that we do.
• We will listen to you and your birthing partner, to ensure that any fears or concerns are addressed in a timely manner.

Milton Keynes University Hospital is returning to a traditional model of community and hospital maternity care to ensure maternity services are safely staffed and women and families receive the best possible care throughout pregnancy, birth and postnatally.

The hospital has been providing maternity care for a proportion of the population it serves through a model of care known as continuity of carer. This model sees service user cared for throughout pregnancy, birth and postnatally by the same midwife, or one of a small team of midwives, and has been shown to support better outcomes – particularly for service users residing in areas of higher deprivation and those from minority ethnic backgrounds.

The hospital moved from having six continuity of carer teams to three in mid-July, following extensive engagement with midwives and maternity staff about the safe provision of maternity care in the community and in the hospital.

Further consultation with staff was undertaken in late July and during August to determine the safest model of care for maternity services at Milton Keynes University Hospital in the context of both current staffing levels and demand on the service (September traditionally being one of the busiest months of the year in maternity).

The outcome of that consultation was to move back to a traditional community and hospital model, bringing midwives working in continuity of carer teams back into community and hospital teams.

People using our maternity services will still be provided with a named midwife. In practice, this change may mean a service user who may have expected to see a midwife from a continuity of carer team in the community and in hospital, seeing a different midwife in the hospital setting than in the community setting, but the level of care they and their family receive will remain unchanged. There is no change to the home birth service which continues to be a choice of place for birth at MKUH.

Anyone using our maternity services will be informed of any change that may affect how they access their midwifery or multi-professional team directly by their midwife.

To read more about the context and background, how we engage with staff, and what this means for people using out maternity services, click here.