NMC responds to national assurance assessment of maternity and neonatal care in Wales

Responding to the findings, Paul Rees MBE, Chief Executive and Registrar, said:

“Professor Holland’s review rightly calls out the racism that persists in maternity care just as it does in society – with devastating effects on Black, Asian and minority ethnic women who are more likely to suffer poor outcomes from their maternity journeys.

“Our suite of actions aimed at ensuring better education and practice in midwifery includes steps to tackle these unacceptable inequalities. Within our actions, we’ve been mapping our standards to understand where they could be strengthened, and to ensure a renewed focus on cultural competence, unconscious bias and anti-racism.

“It’s also shocking to read in Professor Holland’s review that midwives report feeling stigmatised and subject to public hostility. Women and families deserve safe care and it can be devastating when care goes wrong. The NMC is here to act when individuals fall below the expected standards, and we’re improving the timeliness with which we do that. But we must also remember that many excellent midwives are held back by systemic issues which we must work rapidly to improve.

“As the professional regulator of midwives, we’re a part of that system which needs to pull together in a more collaborative way. As an important step in that direction, we will shortly launch a new data dashboard for midwifery – providing a snapshot of Fitness to Practise (FtP) information for Wales and the other countries of the UK.

“The dashboard will share important regulatory insights to help our partners in the sector to understand the FtP landscape for midwifery, so that it can target training and pastoral support where it will have the biggest impact.”

Read the report from the National Assurance Assessment of Maternity and Neonatal Services in Wales.

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