Burnley Green Party Councillors, Martyn Hurt, Sarah Hall and Andy Fewings together with Green Party members and friends joined the vigil yesterday in Burnley Peace Gardens to ‘March with Midwives’.
The vigil sought to raise awareness of the plight of Midwives in the current crisis and to support them and our NHS.
Stats show that out of every 30 new midwives, 29 leave or never enter the workforce. This is unsustainable.
More than 80% of those planning to leave cited inadequate staffing levels and more than 67% said they were unhappy with the quality and safety of care they are currently able to deliver.
The Royal College of Midwives estimates the UK is short 3,500 midwives and this problem is growing rapidly – the April 2021 NHS report showed the number of NHS midwives had fallen by almost 300 in just two months (the fastest fall on record).
Thank you to local midwife Sundas Khalid for the call to action!
Local midwives back the national campaign
In raising awareness about the vigil, Cllr Andy Fewings received a harrowing message from a local midwife, who wants to remain anonymous:
“Your support is truly appreciated, things are unbelievably terrible at the moment.
It’s unsafe and frightening. One night last week I worked a shift, there were just 2 newly qualified midwives and 1 agency midwife; we didn’t have a shift coordinator. The other wards were also short staffed and extremely busy so couldn’t spare any midwives to come and help us out. So for the entire night shift, 3 of us looked after a full ward of 29 women and 29 babies….you can appreciate that it’s impossible to provide safe, effective, personalised care to 58 patients with just 3 inexperienced midwives and no leader! It was actually traumatic.
This is happening far too frequently.
I don’t think there has been a day since I qualified and started work that I haven’t seen at least one midwife in tears at the unachievable demands of trying to keep women and babies safe and to make them feel cared for. At best we can run in and out of rooms, carrying out clinical observations as required… often we don’t even manage to carry out this basic task due to sheer lack of staff.
So unsafe for the women and so terrifying for us, knowing that if there is ever a poor outcome then we are likely to lose our registration, for failing to do the impossible… keep our women safe.”
Please help spread the word!
It was a great turnout, but this is just the beginning of raising awareness of the crisis for Midwives in the NHS.
You can help, please tell people you know about the crisis to spread the word. The Midwives have said this is just the first step.
You can also find the national campaign on Facebook here.