Royal College of Midwives adds The Positive Birth Company’s Closing the Gap workshop to Decolonising Midwifery Education Toolkit

The Decolonising Midwifery Education toolkit has been created by the RCM in response to figures which show Black, Mixed Heritage and Asian women are more likely to die giving birth than white women.

The Positive Birth Company worked with leading inclusion and healthcare professionals in the UK to create their online Closing the Gap workshop to address this urgent human rights issue, with the workshop now added to the RCM’s toolkit to be used by midwives nationwide.

The RCM’s Head of Education, Heather Bower, said: “The inequalities in maternity care for Black and Asian women have been highlighted in several recent reports. The Positive Birth Company has responded to this call to action by producing this informative and empowering resource for health professionals. This course will help midwives and other maternity healthcare professionals to understand some of the issues which create inequalities in maternity care and what they can do to improve the care for Black and Brown women.”

The MBRRACE report found that Black women are 3.7 times more likely to die in childbirth than white mothers, and that South Asian women face a maternal mortality rate that is 1.8 times higher than white women. In 2022, campaigning group Five X More (who are featured in The Positive Birth Company’s Closing the Gap online workshop) also created a report, as did the charity Birthrights, with both calling for better education of health professionals in all aspects of maternity care and diversity.

NHS inclusion lead and Closing the Gapcontributor Sharifa Milford Al-Hashemy, said: “If you are a patient from a Black or ethnic minority background, you’re much more likely to experience things like infection. You’re much more likely to experience things like drugs not being prescribed well. But also, there is something around pain and miscommunication of pain or mismanagement of pain and this isn’t anything inherently to do with the patient from a different background or a different minority ethnic background. It’s because our systems are built in such a way.”

As part of their mission to raise awareness about this issue and encourage more midwives and health professionals to sign up, The Positive Birth Company has launched their #ClosingtheGap campaign, calling on everyone to play a part in creating change. This campaign calls on members of the public to take action by:

• Taking a Closing the Gap leaflet to their next midwife appointment (available to download from The Positive Birth Company website)
• Using the template on The Positive Birth Company website to email their GP
• Using the template on The Positive Birth Company website to email their maternity unit

Find out more at: https://thepositivebirthcompany.co.uk/closing-the-gap

More information about Closing the Gap (from The Positive Birth Company): https://thepositivebirthcompany.co.uk/closing-the-gap

Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/pmx76tDTWLE

More information about Decolonising Midwifery Education toolkit (from RCM):

https://www.rcm.org.uk/media-releases/2023/march/rcm-seeks-to-widen-the-lens-in-midwifery-education-to-address-colonialism-in-maternity/

Staff Writer