Each year, health care regulators, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), run a survey which looks at the experience of women accessing our maternity services.

The Survey involved 121 NHS Trusts in England and is designed to build an understanding of the risk and quality of maternity services and care. It highlights women’s views on all aspects of their maternity care from the first time they see a clinician or midwife, through to the care provided at home in the weeks following the arrival of their baby.

Results from both Northern and Eastern services were very positive and incredibly reassuring.

In our northern services results from a total of 59 questions were in the top 20% of all Trusts, and results from Eastern services were higher or equal to the national average across nine categories of the survey.

Sally Bryant, Head of Midwifery and Women’s Health Northern Services, said: “We are really pleased to see this positive feedback from our service users. This reflects our work as a team to make positive improvements in our service, which has been a focus for the Trust over the last few years.”

Ali Macefield, Deputy Head of Midwifery and Gynaecology said “We are incredibly proud of the results in the most recent survey and our teams continue to be committed to continually improving the experience for our service users”.

Across England the CQC found that:

• Since 2017, there has been a positive upward trend for women reporting that there was no delay with their discharge from hospital
• Support for mental health during pregnancy is improving, although there remains room for further improvement
• There has been a deterioration in the proportion of women saying they were able to get the help they needed throughout the maternity pathway
• There has been a downward trend in women being treated with kindness and understanding

You can read the full survey results at: https://www.cqc.org.uk/publication/surveys/maternity-survey-2022