UHDB home birth service to resume across Derbyshire and Staffordshire
We are delighted to announce that, following a workforce review, our home birthing service will be available for women who choose to have their baby at home from 9am on Monday 4 July.
In response to significant staffing challenges caused by Covid-19, we had to make the difficult decision to suspend the service during the pandemic as we brought our skilled midwives together, to offer the safest possible care to women and babies from our two main acute hospitals.
The leadership team within maternity have continued to monitor staffing levels and there is now sufficient capacity to reinstate the community-based team to offer this service for women across Derbyshire and Staffordshire.
Patti Paine, Director of Midwifery at UHDB said: “We understand that this has been a challenging time for families who have not been able to give birth in their preferred way, but we would like to thank them for their cooperation and understanding during the temporary pause in the service. We would also like to thank our midwifery colleagues who have been incredibly flexible and shown unwavering commitment and compassion when adapting to the changes in circumstances during recent times.
“Our midwives will work with women to discuss this reintroduction of home births as a additional birthing option, so if you have any questions please speak to your community midwifery team.”
We unfortunately had to suspend births at our midwifery-led unit at Samuel Johnson Community Hospital due to workforce issues caused by the pandemic, and we continue to review this decision. We are pleased to have continued to provide antenatal and postnatal care from our hospital in Lichfield and we will resume the birthing service as soon as it is safe for us to do so.
Further details of our home birth service can be found on our website >