Found: Maternity Allowance is available to self-employed women who meet eligibility requirements.

Found: procedures relating to pregnancy vary significantly between services, and many do not provide maternity

Found: The pattern of failings in, for example, maternity services reminds all leaders, executive and clinical

Found: for integrating primary care, the Hewitt review of integrated care systems, the Kirkup Review of maternity

Found: For example, maternity reviews such as East Kent, Nottingham and Ockenden.

Found: Long term trend - CNST and maternity claim volumes Over the longer term, claims in the CNST, the largest

Found: Having had three children, maternity leave is not a break, and it is not a break if somebody else’s

Found: Long term trend - CNST and maternity claim volumes Over the longer term, claims in the CNST, the largest

Found: following: • Guidance to Trusts on bereavement leave for pregnancy loss, • Continuity of Carer in Maternity

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her department is taking to improve retention rates of NHS maternity staff.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out how to improve culture and leadership, to ensure that up to 130,000 fewer staff leave the National Health Service over the next 15 years. This includes: implementing actions from the NHS People Plan that have been shown to be successful; implementing plans to improve flexible opportunities for prospective retirees, and delivering the actions needed to modernise the NHS pension scheme; and committing to ongoing national funding for continuing professional development for nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals, so NHS staff are supported to meet their full potential. These measures apply across staff groups, including maternity staff.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of maternity staff leaving NHS employment on services.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Department works with NHS England on a regular basis to review the numbers of staff working in National Health Service maternity services, and to identify any issues which could potentially impact services.

Growing, retaining, and supporting the maternity workforce to ensure that there are staff with the capacity and the right skills to deliver safe, personalised, and equitable care for women and babies is a key theme of NHS England’s Three Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services. NHS England is also delivering a nursing and midwifery retention programme, supporting organisations in assessing themselves against a bundle of interventions aligned to the NHS People Promise, and to develop high-quality local retention improvement plans.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding has been allocated to the Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigation programme; and whether that funding is time limited.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Department has allocated £16 million to the Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigations Programme for this financial year, which is the last year of this spending review period. Future budgets will be allocated in the usual way as part of the next Spending Review.

The lifespan of the programme is under review and will continue to be overseen by the Care Quality Commission, until directed otherwise by the Department. The Department, through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, is funding an evaluation to understand whether Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch investigations and Perinatal Mortality Review Tool reviews have met their anticipated requirements, resulted in system level quality improvements in maternity care, and improved outcomes for parents and families.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she has taken to ensure that effective support is provided to autistic women (a) during and (b) after childbirth.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Health and Care Act 2022 requires Care Quality Commission registered providers, which includes maternity services, to ensure their staff receive specific training on learning disability and autism, appropriate to their role. We are rolling out the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism to support this. This training will help to ensure that staff have the right skills and knowledge to provide safe and compassionate care, including how to provide reasonable adjustments for autistic people.

NHS England is also working to improve the use and recording of reasonable adjustments to make it easier for autistic people to use health services, by ensuring care is tailored appropriately. This includes the development of a Reasonable Adjustment Digital Flag, which will enable the recording of key information about a patient, including if a person is autistic, and their reasonable adjustment needs, to ensure support can be tailored appropriately.

Urgently review and raise maternity pay to at least the national living wage or a % of salary.

Found: Today, just over 10% of women benefit from occupational maternity pay.

Found: working conditions for all, with regard to, inter alia, wages and earnings, working hours, maternity

Found: Allowance from 2014/15 Pneumoconiosis 1979 scheme Specialised Vehicles Fund from 2014/15 Sure Start Maternity

Found: Disability benefits Housing benefits Incapacity Benefits Income Support Industrial Injuries Benefits Maternity

Found: tax credit and working tax credit under Part 1 of the Tax Credits Act 2002; and (c) a Social Fund maternity

Found: tax credit and working tax credit under Part 1 of the Tax Credits Act 2002; and (c) a Social Fund maternity

Found: In respect of statutory or contractual maternity, paternity or adoption pay all of the following, and

Found: parents, including those on Universal Credit, will receive 30 hours of free childcare from the end of maternity

Found: Maternity Services Monthly Statistics, Final January 2024, Provisional February 2024, experimental statistics

Found: tax credit and working tax credit under Part 1 of the Tax Credits Act 2002; and (c) a Social Fund maternity

Found: break • on special unpaid leave • on a career intermission • on secondment • on additional maternity

Found: religion or faith (or lack of faith), sexual orientation, age, marriage/civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity

Found: You said while Secretary of State for DSIT (maternity cover), you agreed with the permanent secretary

Found: You said while Secretary of State for DSIT (maternity cover), you agreed with the permanent secretary

Found: discrimination on grounds of sex, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity

Found: characteristics consist of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity

Found: characteristics of: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity

Found: legislation covers the protected characteristics of age, disability, gender rea ssignment, pregnancy and maternity

Found: legislation covers the protected characteristics of age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity

Found: A joint piece with the ALLIANCE on women’s experiences in maternity during the pandemic is due to be

Question

To ask the Scottish Government what advances in training on perinatal mental health have been made following the recommendations made in the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee's 1st Report, 2022 (Session 6), Inquiry into perinatal mental health (SP Paper 104), which was published on 8 February 2022.

Answered by Todd, Maree - Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport

The Scottish Government has worked with NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to develop ‘Perinatal mental health curricular framework : a framework for maternal and infant mental health’. This framework sets out the different levels of knowledge and skills required by members of the Scottish workforce who have contact with mothers and their babies, to enable them to support mothers, babies and their families to have positive well-being and good mental health during the perinatal period.

The Scottish Government has also worked with NES to advance training on Perinatal and Infant Mental Health. Training in evidence-based approaches and interventions is delivered to staff across sectors and across practice types including informed, skilled, enhanced and specialist, as appropriate to their role.

This includes education and training within Perinatal and Infant Mental Health through e-learning modules which are available on TURAS, covering seven topic areas of essential knowledge. We have also worked with NES to create a specialist Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Learning Programme which allows NES to track the progress of staff in Specialist Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Services including Mother and Baby Units, Community Perinatal Mental Health Teams and Maternity and Neonatal Psychological Interventions.

During 2024-25, NES will continue to promote training at all levels across the sectors that support the development of positive relationships and attachment in the early years. This will be achieved through increasing workforce capacity to deliver evidence-based parent-child relationships focused interventions and approaches from the antenatal period, through infancy and across childhood.