We received a petition asking:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to guarantee that all midwives qualifying from universities in England are offered at least one year’s paid employment in England’s NHS.”
Details of Petition:
“There are ambitious plans for NHS maternity services in England. By 2009 all women will have choice over where and how they give birth, and support from the same midwife throughout pregnancy. To achieve this we must tackle the chronic shortage of midwives. There is more and more evidence of vacant posts not being recruited to, places for student midwives and training budgets being cut, and much more. What is worse, many newly-qualified midwives find it impossible to find work as a midwife. This is terrible outcome for a new midwife after years of study. It is also a blow to taxpayers, who invest £15,000 on each student midwife every year. A one-year jobs guarantee for newly-qualified midwives would ensure that they are brought into the profession. This is already happening in Scotland, thanks to devolution. That would help to secure the future of midwifery and maternity services in England. Ultimately that is in the best interests of women and their families.”
· Read the petition
· Petitions homepage
Read the Government’s response
On 25 January this year, the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson, announced extra funding for maternity services over the next three years totalling £330million, which should ensure growth in the maternity workforce. It is expected that local NHS organisations should together produce an additional 1,000 midwives by 2009, and on the basis of early Strategic Health Authority (SHA) planning produce an estimated additional 4,000 (3,400 whole time equivalent) posts by 2012 (including the extra 1,000 by 2009). SHA local maternity workplace plans shared with the Department of Health show that this growth should keep pace with the rising number of births.
The Department of Health is working together with the Royal College of Midwives and SHAs for a targeted approach to expanding capacity in the maternity workforce including local return to practice (RTP) programmes and other local initiatives such as leadership programmes. Additional funding of £1.5million has been allocated in 2008 to SHAs to support local initiatives. RTP incentives include free training, support with childcare and travel costs. The total value of the package is up to £3,000 per midwife. RTP is managed locally but midwives should contact the NHS Careers Helpline on 0845 606 0655 for information about a local contact. The campaign is part of our wider drive to recruit 4,000 more midwives by 2012.
The last vacancy survey showed that although there were a number of unfilled midwifery posts there was not a chronic shortage of midwives overall. As at 31 March 2008 there were 159 midwife vacancies in the NHS in England which had been unfilled for three months or more. This represents a vacancy rate of 0.8 per cent which is a significant fall from a rate of 3.3 per cent in 2004.
Currently, there are no plans to offer newly qualified midwives a guaranteed one-year post. However, there are a number of initiatives to assist them in securing their first post and in most parts of England there are no difficulties for graduate midwives securing their first post.
NHS Employers hosted a summit in February 2007, which resulted in the publication of The Social Partnership Forum Action plan for Maximising Employment Opportunities for Newly Qualified Healthcare Professionals in a Changing NHS to support newly qualified healthcare professionals to find their first employment. This document is available from the NHS Employers website at: www.nhsemployers.org (select ‘Recruitment and retention’, then ‘NHS jobs’, then ‘Supporting newly qualified staff’, and the document is available from the menu to the right).
NHS Employers has an ongoing work programme to support employers and newly qualified health professionals through placing examples of good practice on the NHS Employers Knowledge Base webpage and the recent launch of a careers website www.whatcanidowithmydegree.nhs.uk which includes useful information for new graduates.
The number of unemployed graduate midwives in the Newly Qualified Healthcare Professionals Pool has steadily decreased month on month since October 2007, and on 15 October 2008 there were only 28 midwives remaining in the unemployed graduate pool.
NHS Employers hosted a summit meeting in partnership with the Royal College of Midwives and Department of Health on 14 October to discuss quality, leadership and teamwork to deliver the service outlined in the guidance document Maternity Matters: choice, access and continuity of care in a safe service. This is available from the Department of Health website at: www.dh.gov.uk (enter ‘maternity matters’ in the search bar).
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