Your help is needed to influence the health service. If you want to help make a difference, here's how:
The National Childbirth Trust has worked with Sandra Gidley MP to table an Early Day Motion (EDM) in Parliament calling for more support for birth centres. The purpose of an EDM is to allow MPs to express an opinion on a subject and to canvass support for this view by inviting other MPs to add their support. We now need as many MPs as possible to sign up to the motion- this will give us more leverage with Ministers when campaigning against birth centre closures across England and Wales. If you want to check which MPs have signed up so far, please click here.
Ask your MP to support the text below:
Gidley, Sandra
That this House believes women should have choice over where they have their baby, including midwife-led units and birth centres; notes that many women prefer to receive care during pregnancy and labour as close to home as possible; fully supports commitments in the Maternity Standard of the National Service Framework (NSF) for Children, Young People and Maternity Services to provide choice over place of birth; recognises that midwife-led units provide friendly, individualised woman and family-centred maternity care; acknowledges research which shows that for carefully selected, low-risk women, birth centres provide higher normal birth rates and lower rates of medical interventions; further notes that the closure of midwife-led units and birth centres will undermine implementation of the Children's NSFs; in support of these aims, urges the Secretary of State for Health to support the National Childbirth Trust's call for a moratorium on the closure of midwife-led units and birth centres across England and Wales; calls for midwife-led units and birth centres which have been closed temporarily in the past three years to be reopened; and further urges the Government to require primary care trusts and NHS trusts to promote midwife-led units and birth centres to health professionals and the local community to ensure these valuable units are fully used.
How can you help?
MPs are more likely to sign up to the EDM if the request comes from one of their constituents. What we need you to do is email your MP and ask him or her to support EDM 1363 on Birth Centres.
How do you do this? If you do not know who your MP is, please go to the following website http://www.locata.co.uk/commons. Tap in your postcode and it'll let you know who your MP is. You will then be given the option to email your MP. Please take this opportunity to lobby your elected representative- it'll only take a few minutes!
What should my email say?
To find out more about the NCT's parliamentary work, please contact Susan Solanki, NCT Parliamentary Officer on either s_solanki@nct.org.uk or 020 8752 2332.