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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We recently took part in a great event at the James Paget, organised by Women’s Experience Midwife, Abby. The event was called Whose Shoes? This was arranged and convened by the group MatExp who have run these events throughout the country.


The aim of the event was to bring together parents, grandparents, midwives, nurses, doctors, community groups to talk about improving care and what can be done to make the maternity experience better. This was done via the medium of a fun board game (non-competitive obviously!) which allowed all participants to have an equal say and contribute their views.

At the end of the event, all the feedback was shared on an amazing piece of artwork and all participants were asked to create a pledge saying what they would do to help improve maternity services.

At Birth Voices East we have pledged to use your feedback to help continue to improve facilities available to mums on ward 11, working with other attendees of Whose Shoes? to achieve this. Watch this space for how you can help us achieve this soon!

We always love to get your feedback and hear your views.

If you’d like to attend a feedback meeting, our next one will be held at 9:45 – 11:15 am on Wednesday 6 March at Kirkley Children’s Centre.

We look forward to seeing some of you there, but if you can’t attend and want to give feedback then this can be done via our Facebook page or by emailing birthvoiceseast@yahoo.co.uk.

As you may remember, we recently asked parents to complete a wellbeing survey – looking at mental health and the health visiting service in the first 12 months after a baby is born.

We shared that one key point raised by a number of women responding to the survey was that they didn’t feel comfortable in asking for support at weigh in clinics.

This was often due to some clinics being held in public spaces. We felt that a good way to help with this would be to produce a poster showing where women could access advice in public or private. The poster also gives women information on how they can contact health visitors privately to discuss any issues they may not feel comfortable with talking about publicly.
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The poster is below and is also going to be shared on our Facebook page. We hope that it is useful!

Hello and a big thank you for reading my first ever blog post. My name is Nicola and as the newly elected Vice Chair, I thought now was a fitting time to introduce myself.  Raised all over the UK, I settled in Norfolk just over 6 years ago.  I now live in Oulton with my Husband and six month old daughter Florence.  Although currently on maternity leave, my usual day job is project management in the construction industry and I will return to this later in the year.

Following the birth of my daughter in January, I decided to get involved with the group as I felt that I could help represent the local community in regards to giving feedback on pre and post-natal services and also use my work based skills to deliver future projects.      

I am really excited to get started and use your feedback to make our maternity services as best as they can be.   I also can’t wait to work alongside the James Paget team who do fantastic job day in day out.

We are always looking for new mums (or dads) to get involved.  This can be as a user rep; attending occasional meetings and sharing experiences, as a volunteer; helping Katherine and I with our huge to do lists, or just by completing our survey or getting in touch with feedback.
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Finally, I would like to mirror Katherine’s comments in her last blog and offer a big thank you to our previous Vice Chair Gemma and all the work she has done over the past few years.  I’ve certainly got big shoes to fill!

Hopefully I will see some of you at our next meeting in September (date to be confirmed).

​Nicola