NSW Birth Trauma Inquiry response by Health Minister Ryan Park.

Redefining Maternity Care: A Call to Action

Introduction

• The NSW Birth Trauma Inquiry was initiated by MCN and a group of women from Wagga Wagga. You can see the motion in NSW Parliament here. With support from Emma Hurst, MP and investigative journalist Penny Burffitt there was widespread support for this inquiry with over 4000 submissions. MCN's own survey saw over 700 women make submissions.

• Today, Ryan Park MP, made a response to the recommendations. They fell short on criminalising obstetric violence or creating a patient bill of rights for NSW. Ryan Park's response could be described as underwhelming. Many motherhood statements and gaslighting by attempting to report that NSW is already doing XYZ. You can see his response here.

Current State of Maternity Care in NSW

• Around 11% of NSWs maternity services are MGP (Midwifery group practice). The worst of all states in Australia, along with WA and Victoria

• High rates of cesarean and induction of labour

• Few private midwives have visiting access

• insufficient data captured on women's birth experience

Root Causes of Birth Trauma

• Most birth trauma is preventable and due to mistreatment and obstetric violence

• We have created Respectful Maternity Care training, called Better Births with consent. This should be implemented in NSW as opposed to clinicians and bureaucrats creating their own training. They have yet to get it right in the consent space, so should not be creating their own training.

Recommendations for Improving Maternity Care

• Advocate for implementing Midwifery Group Practice with the aim of 80% adoption by 2030

• Propose the use of patient-reported outcomes like MADM, MORI, and MIST, and advocate for their public accessibility

• reduce unnecessary cesarean sections and inductions to lower birth trauma rates. This can be achieved through models of care (continuity of midwifery carer, also known as MGP). And also having publicly available data in infographics women can understand to drive change via transparency.

• Ensure the HCCC properly investigates mistreatment and abuse by care providers. Compulsory consent Respectful Maternity Care training for those practitioners who abuse women.

Ensuring Co-Design and Community Involvement

• It is necessary to involve communities and consumers in the development of initiatives like consent training, trauma-informed care, and cultural training

• Every health service should have a Maternity Advisory Committee which is co-chaired by consumers and has input for targets/timelines for the recommendations above.

  
  

Conclusion

• Overall, the NSW Department response to the Birth trauma inquiry was predictably disappointing. They have showed little interest in engaging with consumers or the Minister showing leadership in this space.

• We expect consumers will continue to have to fight for the implementation of the original recommendations of the Birth Trauma Inquiry.

• We thank the thousands of women for sharing their stories, the MPs for their support and the journalists who helped break the story and continue to pressure the government into action.