Birth stories - experiences of maternity services in Camden

Healthwatch Camden wanted to gather insight about women’s experience of maternity care as a local contribution towards implementing the Better Births strategy.  They spoke to nine women who gave birth since 2020 and four midwives.

The research sets out both positive and negative experiences of women using local maternity services, highlighting the importance of communication, social support, and choice. They heard that perceptions regarding women and pain, especially to women from an ethnic minority background, greatly negatively impacted the care they received.

Although the midwives Healthwatch Camden spoke to suggest the current system for birth plans in place is useful, the interviews with women suggested otherwise; there were common themes of decisions being made for the women, or little to no knowledge of what a birth plan was. Although births do not always go to plan, this disparity of understandings on birth plans is clear in this report.

The pandemic caused huge pressures for the NHS and for the people using its services. It highlighted the health inequalities at play, and greater accessibility measures have been put in place since. Both staff and patients interviewed felt there are shortages in staff and funding, and the women Healthwatch interviewed expressed large amounts of sympathy towards the staff facing these issues.

However, there were common themes across these interviews that expressed a lack of communication – both between staff, and to the patient. While the NHS attempts to improve these shortages and their consequences, more attention needs to be paid to making sure women are kept up to date on the care provided to them.

Most of the women were from ethnic minority backgrounds in line with the demographic in Camden. Their experiences largely followed national trends. Language barriers were particularly linked towards poor experiences on maternity wards despite Camden speaking around 150 languages. Several of women felt comments from healthcare staff were not respectful, even gaslighting them that they should not be or are not in as much pain as they were claiming to be in.

The interviews also highlighted examples where they felt side-lined due to their race. Camden is an extremely diverse borough, and this report can act as one start point towards addressing local needs in health inequalities. Healthcare providers should ensure that staff are trained and up to date so that these perceptions and biases do not impact the care that patients receive.

The report includes recommendations on continuity of care, appointments, birth pans, communication, race/ethnicity and staff wellbeing.