Midwives will check for abuse Maternity care to change

ALL pregnant women will be screened for domestic violence under the new national maternity strategy launched yesterday.

The document, published by Health Minister Simon Harris, sets out a strong commitment to do better to identify signs of domestic violence in women.

By the third quarter of 2018, the HSE will implement the ‘Make Every Contact Count’ programme in maternity hospitals. The programme will aim to better detect concerns of pregnant women such as mental health issues, domestic violence and consumption of alcohol, tobacco and drugs.

As part of the programme all staff will be trained in identifying and raising domestic violence issues with women at antenatal visits.

‘Women will be asked specifically about domestic violence at antenatal and postnatal visits where appropriate,’ the strategy vows.

All women will be screened for domestic violence as part of their antenatal social history in line with HSE policy, the report adds. The strategy says the HSE will seek to introduce a social worker for each maternity unit around the country.

Launching the report yesterday, Mr Harris described it as a ‘landmark day’. Citing Ireland’s poor record on its treatment of pregnant women, he vowed to improve care.

Mr Harris said: ‘I don’t need to remind many people... how confidence in our maternity services in this country was rocked following a number of very tragic incidences.

‘We had our Chief Medical Officer’s report into perinatal deaths in the Midlands Regional Hospital and we had a number of HIQA reports on maternity services, most notably following the death of Savita Halappanavar.’

Mr Harris said the health service will learn from past mistakes, adding: ‘Today we think of all of the families who have been bereaved or whose experiences of our maternity services has been poor and it is so important to our health services that their experiences mattered.

‘It is as a result of their experiences that we have said as a country, and we have said as a health service: we want to do better, we must do better, we will do better.

‘We have listened, we have heard and this has provided us with a very real impetus for change.’

Also contained in the strategy is a commitment to developing a plan to introduce 20-week scans for pregnant women. Campaigners have long been calling for all pregnant women to have access to a 20week scan which can detect serious anomalies. A study by the Cork University Maternity Hospital in August found that 23,800 pregnant women did not receive the scan last year due to lack of resources.

Mr Harris has previously signalled his desire to instate the routine anomaly scan; however, Sinn Féin’s health spokeswoman Louise O’Reilly said the maternity strategy neglects to make a firm commitment to establish anomaly scans.

She said: ‘There are aspects to the plan which are non-committal.’ She further criticised the strategy’s failure to set recruitment targets for more staff. It sets out to develop a 1:1 midwife to woman ratio.

‘We must do better’