PRJ-806 - Maternity Voices Partnership (MVP) AND/OR Maternity Peer Support Service

NHS Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG’s) are responsible for commissioning high quality, responsive and professional services that meet the needs of our local population.
As part of local maternity service provision, the CCGs commissioned a local service, Social Action for Health, to provide our Maternity Voices Partnerships. These partnerships give women and their families the opportunity to feedback on their recent maternity experiences and also to influence service changes in local maternity services through direct partnership working with local maternity providers and commissioners.
Additionally in Tower Hamlets and Newham, Women’s Health and Family Services have been commissioned to provide the “Maternity Mates” project. This project recruits, trains and matches up volunteer peer supporters, or ‘Maternity Mates’, who provide practical and emotional support to vulnerable women during pregnancy, birth and the early weeks of motherhood.
Because the contracts for these services are coming to an end, we now have to go out to the market to invite the existing and any new and interested providers to bid for new contracts. As our CCG’s have historically commissioned similar services from the same providers we are now formalising these joint commissioning arrangements. We expect that this approach will provide joined up services working more closely with our one shared hospital trust, Barts Health NHS Trust. We also think this approach will enable us to commission a model that meets the needs of women and families, particularly our very mobile population and women who live, work and use services right across our patch.
We would like to hear from local women and their families and healthcare providers and professionals in the field to share their thoughts on these existing services. We also want to hear what you want to see in future so that we can ensure that the commissioned services best meet the needs of our local communities.