March With Midwives Manchester

Your experience matters!

Bullying in midwifery is causing great midwives to leave trusts AND midwifery as a profession 😢

Trust and LMNS leaders know this - but nothing is being done about it! Why?!

Because maybe it’s the toxic leadership that’s causing the bullying culture? 🤔

We think this STINKS and it’s about time that all of the leaders of each Greater Manchester maternity service, the trust they work at, and the heads of the GM networks know just how badly their midwifery staff are being affected.

Share your experience of bullying in midwifery and we’ll make sure that it’s HEARD 💥

Link is in bio. Share with your colleagues. You have until the end of May!!

Did you try and scroll?? Nothing there?? Yeah! Same here! 🙋🏽‍♀️

We sat around a table and shared personal, harrowing experiences both as midwives and mothers. We brought real-life, inexpensive solutions which would massively improve the experience and outcome of being pregnant and birthing within Greater Manchester.

Yet we’ve heard nothing back… ZILTCH! 😵
But we keep fighting, banging the drum and pounding the pavements because …

WE DESERVE BETTER!!

Please join us on Friday 16th Feb @ St Peter’s Sq, Manchester at 12pm and let “the powers that be” know that WE HAVE THE POWER ✊🏽

March With Midwives Manchester has written this open letter to Greater Manchester's maternity service providers, educators, royal colleges, and most importantly, the birthing families in our region.

Many of you will have seen the MEN’s recent article about the chronic failings at Manchester Foundation Trust’s St Mary’s Hospital site, where CQC found there to be “significant concerns”. Many of you who will have read it will – rightly – share our horror and concern at the situation.

Here at March With Midwives Manchester we’re trying to make change happen because we’re horrified at the impact this is having both on burnt out staff and families. We met with midwifery leaders from Greater Manchester in June, along with Greater Manchester mayors Andy Burnham and Paul Dennett, representatives from education and Royal College of Midwives. We raised our concerns at the ever increasing safety concerns we’re seeing and hearing, heard from women traumatised from the substandard care being given in an overstretched system, gave potential solutions to ease the immediate staffing concerns and begged for action to be taken to prevent preventable harm from occurring. We were accused of “moaning”. And yet – the CQC inspection at St Mary’s had taken place in March and the Director of Midwifery who attended our meeting as a voice for all Directors/Heads of Midwifery in Greater Manchester would have known the outcome. Their lack of transparency, honesty and accountability shocks us.

March With Midwives Manchester stands for change. We want to see an end to the under staffing and under resourcing that is causing students to leave their courses and experienced staff to leave the workforce in droves. We want to see an end to the over and unnecessary medicalisation that is causing iatrogenic harm to our communities. We want to ensure that there is transparency to the public about the state of each individual maternity unit so each unit is accountable to the community it serves.

Read the article and tell us what you think: https://tinyurl.com/5cv2hv5h Are you a service user who’s been affected by the situation here? Are you a maternity worker impacted by the poor staffing levels at St Mary’s? Do you fall under a different trust and see the same issues happening there?

You can help us with our campaign! Follow our pages and interact with our posts. Look out for calls for action. Fill in our form: https://tinyurl.com/bdzbpdc4 Send us your stories as maternity staff and users of maternity services. Ask questions of your own to your own local trust and demand transparency and change.

We’re Greater Manchester – we SHOULD do things differently here.