Quality and Equality in North West London Maternity Services

In designing this project, we were looking to understand how standards of care vary across North West London, and any factors that may put a woman at risk of receiving a lower standard of care. '

Ultimately, we found that levels of care were consistent: overall, the majority of women we spoke to were pleased with the standard of care they received, across all stages of their pregnancy. Notably, our research did not find a significant disparity in care or outcomes based on the borough they resided in, the hospital used or the participant’s demographic information. 

Some of the positive areas highlighted included: 

• Attention, care and support from staff 
• Amount and quality of information shared 
• Patient choice and respect of patients’ wishes

While the majority of cases were positive, those who had negative or mixed experiences still accounted for a significant number of cases – 41 out of 207, or just under 20%, for experiences of giving birth and 63 out of 148 (42.5%) for postnatal care. 

Often, these experiences occurred when the pathway deviated from the ‘standard’ pathway. For instance, some of the participants who reported negative experiences include a non-birthing mother with experience of surrogacy, women who had to have unplanned c-sections and women who went into labour out-of-hours. These experiences are shared in more detail in the findings section of this report, which outlines the key themes and shares case studies exploring the stories of individual women – both positive and negative. 

The report also outlines our next steps for taking this research forwards.

This project was done in collaboration with the Healthwatch teams from Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, and Westminster.