Due to a critical shortage of midwives the RUH maternity service has suspended community births in Frome and Chippenham and all home birth support. The closure of these services has been ongoing for the majority of 2022 and is in place until at least September. 

We understand the pressure the service is under but the impact of the closures on new families and babies is devastating and should not be underestimated. NHS Trusts have a duty of care to all labouring women and parents.

"Midwives owe the women they care for a legal ‘duty of care’. They are obliged by the NMC Code to ‘put the interests of people using midwifery services first’ and to ‘make their care and safety [their] main concern’. Under human rights law, all Trusts and their employees are obliged to respect women’s decisions in childbirth and cannot compel a woman to receive care in a hospital." birthrights.org.uk

They should also be making alternative arrangements if the closure of the homebirth service is a regular occurrence:

"Finally, as NHS resources become more stretched, home birth services are too often cut back by Trusts. While Trusts may rely on staffing shortages for failing to send midwives to a home birth they should only do so if there is a genuine and unforeseen staffing shortage. If they are withdrawing the service on a regular basis, they can be expected to make alternative arrangements. In a recent case, the NHS Ombudsman accepted that an NHS Trust that refused to make contingency plans after it suspended its home birth services was acting unreasonably." birthrights.org.uk

The RUH Trust has previously consulted on centralising maternity services at the RUH and has proposed creating an alongside birth centre on the site. This was passionately contested during a consultation process in 2017, unfortunately they did still close Trowbridge and Paulton to births, despite local opposition, and the alongside centre has not been built. We do not want to see the services in the community eroded any further. Women and families want to give birth locally, they value the continuity of care received in community birth centres and they want the option to birth at home. 

We cannot let these services slip away, a casualty of the pandemic and chronic underfunding of our public services. We want to let the trust know how much our birth choices matter to us and ensure they prioritise them in the future. Please sign this petition and if you want to add your reasons in the comments then we can collate these to feed back to the Maternity Voices Partnership. 

Charlotte, Alice, Katherine (directors of Frome Baby Connections)