27-02-2023
'Maverick midwives' and how women are losing what they need most, with midwife Maureen Collins
In this episode I’m speaking to midwife and hypnobirthing expert Maureen Collins. When I was writing and researching Give Birth like a Feminist back in 2018, I spoke to Maureen, who at the time was Head of Midwifery for One to One Midwives, a service that since 2010 had offered a caseloading midwifery model – this basically means when women are cared for by a midwife they get to know and trust – in the North West of England and Essex. This One to One service was free to women under the NHS, and, as you’ll hear in the podcast, they had the most fantastic outcomes for women and babies, with an exemplary safety record AND numbers of straightforward vaginal births at home AND in hospital WAY higher than the national average.
In spite of these incredible statistics, back in 2018 Maureen told me that she felt One to One were seen as ‘mavericks’ and that much of her time was being spent trying to protect her midwives and One to One itself from criticism and, at worst, from being closed down.
At the time she said to me: “There is excessive scrutiny, and no attention paid to our outcomes. If people cared about outcomes, our service would be rolled out across the country. Instead we are constantly under threat.”
And we talked about other, similar models of care, like the famous Albany practice in London, that, in spite of incredible outcomes, had already been closed down. And then – in 2019 – Maureen’s fears were realised, when One to One was also closed. So, I wanted to catch up with Maureen, and find out more about what happened, and why these woman centred services keep being lost.
You can find Maureen's hypnobirthing work at: https://www.thebirthcoachingcompany.co.uk/
She is on instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/birthcoachingcompany/
Find Give Birth like a Feminist and Milli's other books here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Milli-Hill/e/B00RITKBBE/
