Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS) action plan to improve equality and equity for mothers, babies, and maternity staff across the region.

The standard definition of high-quality care includes the requirement for it to be ‘Safe, Effective, Efficient, Timely, Equitable and with a good user experience’.

To reflect the ambitions of the maternity transformation strategy derived from the original ‘Better Births’ document in 2016 and the NHS Long Term plan (2019) the HNY LMNS coproduced an Equity and Equality Analysis (last updated in May 2022) and have now published an Action Plan covering the next five years up until 26/27 and detailing how we plan to address our identified areas of inequity.

The HNY LMNS vision is for maternity and neonatal services to be kind as well as safe for all, by supporting and enabling our teams to consistently provide personalised, supportive, and informed care, with empathy, understanding and compassion.

All women, birthing people and babies who use our maternity and neonatal services should receive the best care possible, which is why we are committed to reducing health inequalities and addressing inequity –  our Equity and Equality Action Plan sets out how we will do this.

Equity means that all mothers, birthing people and babies will achieve health outcomes that are as good as the groups with the best health outcomes, this requires increasing support as health inequalities grow.

Maternity and neonatal services need to respond to each person’s unique health and social situation – with increasing support as health inequalities increase, particularly in the current financial and economic climate – so that care is safe and personal for all.

To ensure clinical outcomes are ‘levelled up’ the Humber and North Yorkshire Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS) has co-produced an Action Plan covering the next five years up until 26/27 and detailing how we plan to address our identified areas of inequity and ensure equality in maternity and neonatal services, it was published on 30th September 2022 and can be found here.

Actions in the main address the poorer outcomes for women, birthing people and their babies from Black, Asian and Minority or Mixed Ethnic backgrounds, and those living in deprived areas.

Actions are grouped under 5 main priorities, these are:

1. Restore NHS services inclusively
2. Mitigate against digital exclusion
3. Ensure datasets are complete and timely
4. Accelerate preventative programmes that proactively engage those at greatest risk of poor health outcomes
5. Strengthen leadership and accountability

Our Action Plan details how we will:

• increase support for our at-risk pregnant women and birthing people
• improve how we record ethnicity and risk factors
• ensure access to all to our Personal Care Plan resources
• better understand our local population and staff experiences
• design interventions to improve equity for women and babies/race equality for staff
• ensure equity in access, experience, and health outcomes for all
• address the leading causes of perinatal mortality and morbidity for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Groups and women and birthing people living in our most deprived areas.

We will continue to develop and coproduce work plans that meet the needs of our populations and to pool inspiration and ideas with our colleagues across the region.

To read the action plan of the Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership’s Local Maternity and Neonatal System please visit the LMNS website.