Happy ‘International Day of the Midwife’ to all the wonderful and courageous midwives at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust!

Despite the continued challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, our midwives have worked hard to ensure the safest and most effective care possible for women and their babies. And in the face of adversity, our midwives have continued to be innovative. Some recent highlights include:

• Reintroducing the home-births service
• The introduction of our Equality and Inequality Lead Midwife, Carol King-Stephens
• Student midwives learning via the Collaborative Learning in Practice Placement scheme
• Adopting a new triage system – BSOTS (Birmingham Symptom Specific Obstetric Triage System)
• Hosting mini skills sessions in outpatients
• Mums-to-be now have a reduced wait for scans

The efforts of our midwifery teams is astonishing, and I’m always impressed by the enthusiasm of staff to further enhance the service we provide. I’m extremely proud of the teams who come together in different ways – whether it’s about service redesign and positive patient outcomes, or just stopping to celebrate each other’s achievements and recognise the success stories. Today, on this special day, please take a moment to pause and appreciate what you’ve achieved these past 12 months – you’ll be amazed at how much you’ve accomplished!

It has been a fantastic year for strengthening our services, particularly following a recent recruitment day where we welcomed 17 new starters, all who will join us between now and September. You can read about this in detail on our website

Looking forward, we will continue to listen to the voices of the women and families of Walsall and make positive changes. We also want to use our new equality and diversity lead midwife to further engage with hard-to-reach communities surrounding the Trust. This is particularly important to ensure women and babies have equal access to the healthcare they deserve.

Finally, when thinking about the future, I just want to say my door is always open should any staff wish to talk through a proposed improvement project or idea, because this innovation and creativity is what makes us the #RealMidwivesofWalsall. Your voice will always be heard.

Thank you midwives, and the wider maternity team, for always going the extra mile for our mothers, babies and families.