Hello all
As lots of you will hopefully know, we at MNHQ run campaigns every now and then on issues that really matter to MNers. Ongoing campaigns include better miscarriage care (keep an eye out for developments on that in the next month or so), support for families caring for children with disabilities and additional needs (MNHQ has signed up to a new campaigning alliance on that and we'll fill you in on what's happening soon), and rape myths.
We've been thinking for a while, though, that many of the most urgent and upsetting things our users talk about fall under the heading of - frankly - inadequate postnatal care.
MNHQ was involved in the National Maternity Review recently, and even among the senior NHS professionals there it was evident that there's a consensus that postnatal is the 'Cinderalla' of maternity services: underfunded, poorly resourced and rarely thought about - except when it goes horribly wrong.
Obviously this is a huge area and a very complex issue to address - so we'd like to hear from you:
- is this something you'd like to see MNHQ get into?
- which aspects of postnatal care need to be improved? We're already thinking about things like: breastfeeding support; perinatal mental health; staffing and conditions on postnatal wards; partners on postnatal wards (we know most of you aren't in favour ); care in the community from health visitors and community midwives; injury care for women post-birth, and longer-term care for pelvic floors; the six-week check and whether it really works for women and babies... but we're sure there are more.
- what solutions would you like to see? What's needed (up to and including money) to improve postnatal services for women and their families?
The aim of this thread is to find out whether you think this is a good idea overall, and to get a sense of which issues and which problems you think need attention - so please fire away and let us know your thoughts. When we've got something to work with we'll put together a survey for all our users so that we can get a bit of data to help us make some decisions.
Thanks
MNHQ