As we once again find ourselves in a national lockdown, with restrictions on reasons that we may leave our home, it is important that some points are highlighted with regards to how to access maternity care, specifically, how to let the local maternity services know that you are pregnant. 
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The Government says "You can leave home for a medical reason, including to get a COVID-19 test, for medical appointments and for emergencies." and "You can leave home to be with someone who is giving birth or, accessing other maternity services, or to be with a baby receiving neonatal critical care. There is NHS guidance on pregnancy and coronavirus"

It is important that if you wish to access antenatal care, you do this as soon as you find out that you are pregnant. During the pandemic maternity services remain open.

You can access antenatal care, including a booking appointment, at your GP surgery, by contacting them by telephone and asking for an appointment with the midwife. In the event that you cannot get an appointment, for routine care/booking, please contact the antenatal clinic; 01493 453892.

If you have urgent concerns (bleeding, pain, reduced fatal movements, labour or your waters break) please contact Delivery Suite 01493 452190.

Recently, myself (Jodie) and Kaya from the Birth Voices MVP, went along to the Paget to carry out a '15 Steps Exercise' (more about that in another blog....), we heard about the excellent offer from the Pelvic Health Physio team and knew that more people needed to hear about what is on offer in terms of after birth physiotherapy support.  We got in touch with Jenna a Clinical specialist Pelvic Health Physiotherapist and she has given us some info to share:

The Pelvic Health Physiotherapy team are based at the James Paget Hospital, offering support for those who have delivered at the hospital. They also see women, men and children for incontinence symptoms and women specifically for pelvic organ prolapse.

Traditionally they see new mums on the wards after they have given birth offering advice on pelvic floor and abdominal exercises and birth recovery, including support after a cesarean section. 

In 2018-2019 the physiotherapy team undertook a survey with new mums at the JPUH with the aim to identify mums preferred methods of receiving after birth support from the team. 50% of mums stated they would like YouTube video information compared to 34% saying they would like the current method of a physiotherapist visiting them on the ward. 

As a result of the feedback received from the survey the Physiotherapy team have produced a suite of postnatal videos to supplement the care they provide. These are now available and accessible to all on the James Paget website under the maternity department and pelvic health physiotherapy department page. 

The Eden Team is a specialist team of midwives supporting women and birthing people throughout their pregnancy and with postnatal care.  They work very closely with the women and birthing people they support, as a small team they are able to offer one to one care as much as possible.

Currently, Eden Team offer a service where all care during pregnancy and after the baby is born, is provided by one midwife in the home.  This includes antenatal checks, attendance at professional meetings, involvement with care plans and accompanying the person to hospital appointments. The current model does not include being present for the birth of the baby.

A national transformation plan for maternity care is underway, and as part of this plan Eden Team need to find out from those that use, or have used their services, some information that will help inform any possible future changes to the way the team works. 

If you have been cared for by the Eden Team you are invited to complete the survey. 

We recently collaborated with the Infant Feeding Team at the James Paget University Hospital to design a survey with the aim of trying to understand how the service needs to be adapted to provide all families with the best support possible. We were interested in hearing about breastfeeding support experiences since the start of the Coronavirus lockdown where the traditional support groups, clinics, cafe's and services had to cease.

The survey results showed that:

• Most families felt somewhat prepared for breastfeeding before baby arrived (although, some of these families may have experienced antenatal education that others, further into the pandemic, did not).
• Most families wanted to have video calls made available with the Infant Feeding Team. 
• Most families wanted to receive an antenatal pack via email to help prepare themselves for breastfeeding.
• Nearly all families felt they could access the JPUH Infant feeding team for support in the early days once baby had arrived.
• Nearly all families found the information posted on the Bumps to Breastfeeding page useful.
• Most families also wanted to be able to access a peer supporter by phone.

As a result of your collective voices, the following changes have started taking place: 

• The tongue tie clinic run by Kay Horn the Infant Feeding Lead is now reopened and being accessed by families for tongue tie procedures.
• The Infant Feeding Team continue to make calls to all families discharged as breastfeeding from delivery suite and the ward.
• The Infant Feeding Team are moving towards getting an antenatal pack available for families before delivery,.
• The Infant Feeding Team are working towards opening a face to face clinic to allow them to support parents who are struggling with breastfeeding.
• The team are also working on how to utilise the skills of the peer supporters to provide additional support for families in these difficult times.

Thank you to all those people who participated in this survey, and any of our other feedback surveys or tools. If you would like to give feedback or get involved with the MVP, please pop a message over to us, we'd love to hear from you. 
Thanks for reading,
Kaya (Breastfeeding Lead Service User Rep)

Recently, I shared the below presentation at the MVP meeting. It was an opportunity to talk to the JPUH Maternity health professionals and maternity related stakeholders, such as the CCG, Healthwatch, SANDS and Get Me Out about the views that service users have regarding the changes to services that had taken place as a result of Coronavirus. 

As a result of your feedback, work was done behind the scenes to enable the reintroduction of birth partners attending the 12 and 20 week scans, this was particularly important to parents who had tragically experienced bereavement of a baby and were incredibly worried about attending scans alone. We raised concerns about the impact on first time parents who were without the usual support networks of antenatal classes and groups to attend. Mental health of birthing people and their families was discussed, and agreed as a future workstream. Breastfeeding support was a hot topic, service users feel more needs to be done postnatally- our Breastfeeding MVP lead has been working with the Infant Feeding Leads at the JPUH and has been pleased to share that tongue tie clinics have now been reinstated. There will be a blog post specifically regarding breastfeeding support to follow. 
Time was also spent discussing communication, we discovered that overwhelmingly, respondents preferred to use a digital platform to keep abreast of maternity updates. The MVP suggested that more work needs to be done on the JPUH social media management, perhaps including training on the use of social media and the impact and influence the tool can have.

For now, please have a glance through the slides, if you'd like to get involved in the voluntary work we do, please complete the contact form, we'd love to hear from you!
Thanks for reading, 
​Jodie

Last week was a busy one! We held our virtual MVP meeting and welcomed some new faces, and some we already know. It was lovely to see representatives from Healthwatch, Get Me Out, Time, Sands and Angels and Rainbows, as well as breastfeeding support groups Lowestoft and Waveney Breastfeeding Support and Breastfeeding Mum Meets.  We will do a blog post to let you know what came of the meeting and share what your collective voices have achieved.
Before that though, we find ourselves in Breastfeeding Celebration Week.  

JPUH Bumps to Breastfeeding Facebook page and the Lowestoft and Waveney Breastfeeding Support Facebook pages are sharing breastfeeding success stories, tips and highlighting the support offered to families. 

The Infant Feeding Lead at James Paget, Kay Horn has said the following "we are continuing in the best way we can at present to support mums and babies breastfeeding. Although not face to face, we are calling all mums to offer phone and online support."
We also heard from Kay at the MVP meeting sharing how this is working, and from Kaya at Lowestoft and Waveney Breastfeeding Support who was able to feedback that the calls Kay and her colleagues make to those families in the early days of breastfeeding, are received really well. Kaya did also explain that they had received a lot more requests for support at LWBS than usual times. 

​With this in mind, Kay has put together the following questions for you:
The small print-
The survey is important because it helps the maternity staff know what is working well for pregnant people, new parents and their families, and what areas there are concerns about. We will collate and analyse the feedback we receive and share this back to the leadership team who design the services you use. You might feel that alone, your opinions and feelings about your maternity care (whether good or bad) would not make a difference, but by speaking as a group, we can make sure your voices are taken seriously and services can be designed to suit the needs of you, the people that are using them. Your response is anonymous and you will not receive a response. we do not ask for any identifiable information, if you would like to receive updates about the work done by Birth Voices East, please fill out the Contact Form and we can add you to our mailing list. Please share the survey.
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​This week, Birth Voices East user reps had a virtual meeting with the Better Birth's midwife Alana. It is Alana's role to seek quality improvement across the maternity services offered by James Paget University Hospital (JPUH) and to do this she needs to hear from pregnant people, new parents and their families that use the service. At this time, whilst we are all experiencing the Coronavirus outbreak, maternity services offered by JPUH, have had to change. Alana said "we understand that we've made lots of changes right now and we'd like to know how women are feeling about this". 

With this in mind the MVP have generated a simple survey, below. The survey is important because it helps the maternity staff know what is working well for pregnant people, new parents and their families, and what areas there are concerns about. We will collate and analyse the feedback we receive and share this back to Alana and the leadership team who design the services you use. You might feel that alone, your opinions and feelings about your maternity care (whether good or bad) would not make a difference, but by speaking as a group, we can make sure your voices are taken seriously and services can be designed to suit the needs of you, the people that are using them. Your response is anonymous and you will not receive a response. we do not ask for any identifiable information, if you would like to receive updates about the work done by Birth Voices East, please fill out the Contact Form and we can add you to our mailing list. Please share the survey.

Privacy statement:
We will use the personal information that you provide in this form in accordance with applicable data protection laws and our Privacy Policy – available at nationalmaternityvoices.org.uk/privacy
This information is being collected by your local Maternity Voices Partnership to gain a better understanding of current local maternity services so that improvements can be made in the future. We will process your personal information in order to deliver this service safely and effectively, and where otherwise reasonably necessary for our purposes.
You can expect your personal information to be stored securely. It will be kept on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity We will not share your personal information (contact information) with anyone else without your explicit prior consent. Your responses will be anonymised and only used for the purpose of improving local maternity services.
If you would like to find out more about your local MVP and the work that we do, please contact us
You can also contact us at any time to ask for your personal information to be updated or deleted.

Tuesday 5th May 2020 is International Day of the Midwife.
On this day, we'd love to celebrate the Midwives of James Paget University Hospital with the #IThankYou campaign. Post on our page or in the comments, with the #IThank[name of your midwife] or #IThankYou if you're not sure of their name or you want to thank an aspect of the service rather than an individual.
We will make sure that the messages are passed on to the MVP link midwife and shared with the whole team.
#Midwives2020
#IDM2020
#JamesPagetUniversityHospital

Our next informal feedback event will take place at Bungay Community Library on 7 May.  We will be here from 1.30pm to 3.30pm and will also be joined by the James Paget's Women's Experience Midwife - Abby.

​This event is for anyone who has given birth at the James Paget in the last five years to give feedback, good or bad. Babies and toddlers are welcome and the library has a great Children's Library and garden and is a very welcoming space.

​We hope to see as many as possible of you there and for more information please get in touch via the Birth Voices East facebook page or email us at birthvoiceseast@yahoo.co.uk!
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