Advanced Clinical Practice – National Maternity Workforce Programme

Health Education England (HEE) is looking to appoint a partner to undertake a deep dive review of the current Advanced Clinical Practice (ACP), Specialist Midwife and Consultant Midwife workforce in England. This will include an evaluation of the call for evidence information already obtained by HEE, to identify potential workforce, training and competency gaps and solutions in relation to the roles. The proposed outputs from this work would be:
1.1 An Evaluation Report and a set of recommendations for next steps (including a project timeline for the development of a set of standards for maternity which align to the national ACP competency framework based on the Evaluation Report) to be presented back to HEE four months after contract award date.

2. Background
The Maternity Transformation Programme (MTP) led by NHS England is delivering the Better Births vision of improving maternity care in England, through ten workstreams. HEE is leading on workstream 5 (Transforming the Workforce) to help shape the future maternity workforce so it can implement the workforce requirements outlined in Better Births and support new models of care.

The Maternity Workforce Transformation Strategy was developed with partners to support the wider Maternity Transformation Programme to deliver the vision for the future of maternity services, and in particular the vision set out in Better Births, the report of the National Maternity Review; and the ambition of the government to halve the rate of stillbirth, neonatal death, maternal death and serious intrapartum brain injury by 2025.

The purpose of the Workforce Strategy is to support maternity services in making changes, whilst ensuring that there is sufficient capacity in the workforce nationally. It aims to do so by supporting and empowering individual teams and individual midwives, doctors and other health professionals, and the organisations they work in, to deliver that vision, and by ensuring that, overall, the NHS in England has the workforce of the size and skill mix it needs.

The strategy was launched in March 2019 and work is now progressing, led by HEE and working closely with partners, to deliver the action areas.