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This page sets out how Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire ICB will continue to work towards achieving Maternity Services equity and equality outcomes for our women and their families, for the population of Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.
This will be achieved through working closely with our acute maternity service providers – North Bristol Trust (NBT) and University Hospitals Bristol and Weston (UBHW) within local hospital and community settings.
Our improvements will be based on service user and population data, and working towards achieving specific equitable maternity outcomes where inequality is evident.
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What is the difference between equity and equality?
Although equity and equality are often used interchangeably, they are very different.
Equality means that everybody has the same resources and opportunities, regardless of their circumstance. Equality is a statement.
Equity is recognising that individuals and their backgrounds have strengths and limitations, meaning that some will require more support than others to ensure equity. Our plans will focus on equity in order to achieve equality.
What is an outcome?
Outcomes are the result of care which individuals receive. For example, a preterm baby in good health returning home is what we always strive for.
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Priorities – How we will support you
1. Improve data collection
Develop and launch a Maternity Services data dashboard to identify, evidence and monitor the required improvements for you and your family.
2. A fair start for pre-term newborns
Improve maternity intervention uptake to support the healthy development of pre-term newborns where they are within ethnicities presenting with inequity; in line with the NHS Race and Health Observatory.
3. Healthy lifestyle
If you are currently a smoker or have a higher BMI, we will support you in changing your smoking status and reducing your body weight for both your health and the health of your future child.
4. Maternity Neonatal Voice Partnership recruitment
Drive recruitment of maternity service users in the public to Maternity Neonatal Voice Partnership (MNVP) roles, proportional to the service user ethnic representation to ensure all voices are included in the improvement of our maternity services.
5. Data-driven equity
Using our maternity data as evidence, work toward equity of outcomes for you and your babies, by identifying differences in outcomes, then investigating possible causes, and developing solutions that restore health equity.
6. Accessible maternity care
Drive equitable access to maternity services for all women and their babies, ensuring no matter your background you will have the care you need to give you and your baby the best possible outcomes. Within this, we want to focus on perinatal pelvic health and postpartum contraception.
7. Maternity staff training
Drive training of all our maternity and neonatal staff, to continuously improve the delivery of equitable care, by enabling them to notice service areas that could be increasing inequity, which may be due to ethnic differences. An example of this is working delivering the Black Maternity Matters training.
8. Inclusive recruitment
We will check our recruitment practices within our services, to identify cultures less proportionally present in our workforce, creating an action plan to work closer with those communities to ensure they do not face barriers to important employment within our services.
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Planning or having a baby?
Maternity services
Planning or having a baby?
Advice on planning for a baby, where to have your baby, breastfeeding and pre or postnatal depression.
Maternity services
Information about the range of maternity services and birth options in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.