What is the positive change that has emerged through new collaborations or partnerships during Covid-19 that your project is going to embed?

Through a change to the use of virtual & telephone appointments, availability of online resources and the maternity team collaborating in new ways both within and outside the hospital – with health visitors, GPS & community midwifery colleagues – women continued to feel supported during the Covid lockdown period. They were able to engage with the service in different ways beyond the just the face to face contact they had anticipated and successfully received relevant guidance & useful information.

Continuation of this will give further flexibility for women engaging with the service, and support the on-going collaborative working to deliver beneficial support and patient experience.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The project aims to deliver a dedicated maternity telephone assessment service that will enable women to gain advice, support and information from a consistent single source and enable easy collaboration with community care partners.

The key objectives are:

• To create a single point of contact for pregnancy, labour and postnatal questions
• To provide women and families reassurance, support and advice from  qualified midwives
• To reduce risk by recording contacts on a single system which highlights multiple attendances.
• To refer women as appropriate to resources in the local community such as GPs, feeding support services and health visitors.
• To be accessible to all women, through use of live interpreting services

At present, women make contact with the maternity services in many different ways.  This can lead to a lack of consistent information and moreover on occasion vital information being missed.

How will the project be delivered?

While staffing is already in place through availability to allocate a midwife to the telephone assessment service every shift, the technology, systems and protocols & procedures need to be developed

• We will co-design standardised protocols and procedures with our service users and partner organisations
• Working with the team & IT support we will appraise & decide best options for equipment, software – to enable contact and information recording – and access to language line / translation services (including for deaf service users) as needed.

Impact and efficacy of the service will be measured in a number of ways, including:

• Number of referrals made
• Regular feedback from users, community partners and staff

Risks will be managed throughout but it is anticipated that the dedicated telephone line will reduce risk in the unit by channeling all enquiries in to a single source, with staff having clearly defined advice and referral processes in place.

How is your project going to share learning?

The maternity service is already a key contributor to a number of networks through which the learning will be shared via presentation, teaching sessions and formal and informal contacts.  These networks include:

• South West London Local Maternity System (including primary care, commissioners and other Trusts)
• London Maternity  Clinical Network (clinical leaders in maternity care in the capital)
• London Maternity Voices Partnership (maternity patient /user groups)
• National Directors of Midwifery / Consultant Midwives’ networks

Sharing will be open and honest and can include sharing of guidelines and protocols, as well as positive and negative learning points.  We will also continue to seek to learn from others, primarily the women using the service, but also staff working both on the assessment line and alongside it and other community and primary care functions.