Policy paper

Maternity Disparities Taskforce: terms of reference

Published 18 July 2022

Applies to England

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The Maternity Disparities Taskforce has been established to bring together experts from across the health system and across government departments to tackle disparities in maternal and neonatal outcomes for women from ethnic minorities and those living in the most deprived areas.

The objectives of the taskforce are to tackle disparities for mothers and babies and reduce maternal and neonatal deaths by improving access to effective pre-conception care and maternity care for women from ethnic minorities and those living in the most deprived areas. The taskforce will also focus on improving cross-government working to address the social determinants of health for women and babies from ethnic minorities and those living in the most deprived areas.

The taskforce has a specific focus on improving pre-conception care and access to maternity care for women from ethnic minorities and those living in most deprived areas.

The taskforce will look to develop key maternity priorities to improve pre-conception care and access to maternity care and tackle disparities in experiences and outcomes of women from ethnic minorities and those living in most deprived areas.

The taskforce will look to explore and consider evidence-based interventions for the following areas:

  • reduce rates of smoking, drinking and drug use in pregnancy
  • improve education and awareness of pre-conception health with a focus on planning for pregnancy such as taking folic acid supplement before pregnancy and maintaining a healthy weight
  • improve personalised care and support plans and focus on addressing wider social determinants of health
  • improve access to maternity care for all women and develop interventions for women from the most vulnerable groups
  • improve access and support for informed decision-making during childbirth for all women

The taskforce will explore learning from existing interventions to tackle disparities such as those in the:

In addition, the taskforce will explore learning from related, ongoing programmes of work such as the implementation of the Best start for life: a vision for the 1,001 critical days.

Once interventions are developed, the taskforce will look to identify and develop indicators to be able to monitor and measure impact (noting that the Long Term Plan headline metrics include a maternity metric and work is underway, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), to develop a maternal health inequalities metric).

Members

Members comprise of representatives from:

  • DHSC
  • NHS England (NHSE)
  • Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID)
  • the Royal College of Midwives
  • the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
  • the Royal College of Nursing
  • primary care leads
  • Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB)
  • Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK (MBRRACE-UK)
  • the Institute of Health Visiting
  • the National Child Mortality Database (NCMD)
  • Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
  • Maternal Mental Health Alliance
  • Health and Wellbeing Alliance (Maternity Consortium)

The taskforce will also invite representatives from organisations from the Health and Wellbeing Starting Well Fund to share outcomes from their projects in the communities and share experiences from service users.

In addition, the taskforce will hear from services users to ensure women’s voices and experiences are heard and represented in the taskforce.

The members are responsible to bring their expertise to the discussion around development and to debate actions which will support addressing disparities for mothers and babies.

The actions developed and agreed in the taskforce will be monitored by officials and members will be responsible to provide update on progress between meetings.

Permanent members will be expected to nominate an appropriate deputy to attend in their absence, to ensure adequate and broad representation.

Chairs

The meetings will be co-chaired by:

  • Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Patient Safety and Primary Care, James Morris MP
  • NHS England Chief Midwifery Officer, Professor Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent

Frequency and length of meetings

Meetings will be held every 2 months for an hour and a half discussion on key priorities and progress with delivery of interventions.

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