£3,000 for every mum to pay for a home birth
NHS to urge ALL mothers to shun hospitals
MATERNITY budgets of £3,000 are to be offered to all mothers-to-be under an NHS drive to encourage home births.
The women will be allowed to spend the money on private one-to-one midwives or on birthing centres providing acupuncture and hypnotherapy, rather than pain-relieving drugs.
A major review by NHS England today calls for women to be given more ‘clout’ and ‘choice’ about how and where they give birth.
Home births and deliveries in smaller midwife-led centres are statistically just as safe as hospital wards.
The money will be available for some women next year in pilot schemes which are due to be rolled out nationally by 2018/19. Ultimately the NHS intends to save itself money because home births are far cheaper than those in hospital.
But experts fear women will be pressured to have the ‘least costly option’ when it might not always be the safest.
ALL pregnant women will be provided with maternity budgets of £3,000 to pay for personal midwives and home births. They may also put the money towards a private birthing suite – supervised by midwives – with hypnotherapy to control the pain.
Mothers-to-be will not be handed the money directly but midwives and doctors will help them draw up a maternity plan setting out exactly how it will be spent.
The funds are part of an overhaul in NHS maternity services to urge more women to have their babies at home, or in small midwife-run centres, rather than in hospital.
A major review today also calls for hospitals to improve safety in maternity units to reduce needless mistakes by midwives and doctors.
It was commissioned after the scandal at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay, Cumbria, where up to 30 mothers and babies died over a decade.
A damning report last year blamed the deaths on a ‘mafia’ of midwives who refused to involve doctors even when labours went tragically wrong.
Yet figures from the Care Quality Commission watchdog show that half of hospital maternity units still fail to meet basic safety requirements.
Today’s review led by Tory Peer Baroness Cumberlege also sets out how:
Midwives and doctors should attend training courses together to avoid ‘dysfunctional relationships’,
Hospitals must report all ‘near misses’ and blunders on labour wards and properly learn from mistakes,
Some smaller hospital maternity units may close as more women choose to have babies at home,
Women should see one or two familiar midwives throughout pregnancies, rather than a succession of strangers.
Currently almost 90 per cent of the 660,000 women who give birth in England every year have their babies in hospital, even though only one in four would choose to.
Yet births at home or midwife-centres are far cheaper than in hospital and, providing there are no complications, no more dangerous. NHS officials say midwives and GPs are not giving mothers enough information about the alternatives to enable them to make an informed decisions.
However, campaigners fear the reforms will lead to women being pressurised into having babies at home or in a midwifeled centre because they are the ‘least costly option’.’
They may also lead to the closures of some maternity wards at rural hospitals because fewer women will use them.
The NHS’s maternity services are struggling to cope with the combined pressures immigra- tion and rising numbers of older and more obese mothers prone to complications.
From next year, the Government will launch pilots in four health trusts in England involving thousands of women.
They will be told about their maternity budgets during their first check-up with the midwife or GP after discovering they are pregnant.
Those considered low risk will be offered £3,000 but there will be more for those with complications such as obesity, longterm illnesses or who are expecting twins. Some may opt to pay for their own one-to-one midwife to enable them to have a home birth. Others may put it towards having their babies delivered in a private suite at a midwife-led centre where they can have hypnotherapy, aromatherapy and acupuncture.
Some may opt to pay for home visits from midwives after the birth or breastfeeding classes.
Officials expect the budgets to be available to all women by 2018/19. They will still be allowed to turn the money down and have a hospital birth if they wish. The NHS watchdog NICE claims home births are less dangerous than hospital births for second-time mothers at low risk of complications. But critics say there is too little evidence to make comparisons
Baroness Cumberlege, a former health minister, said: ‘Women are not getting the choices they want. This is going to give women much more clout. It’s a driver for change, it’s a driver for choice.’
Simon Stevens, chief executive of the NHS, said: ‘In theory mums have always had a choice of where they can go and give birth but in practice that choice is not being explained or not fulfilled.’
‘Give women more clout’