AIMS submitted our response to this consultation on the 23 January 2018.
A number of regulators, including the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), the General Medical Council (GMC) and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) play a key role in undertaking the ongoing quality assurance and regulation of the maternity services and its staff. Effective and efficient regulatory bodies are vital for safeguarding maternity service users, and AIMS - on behalf of all maternity service users - thus seeks to keep their activities under close review and push for improvements to the maternity-related regulatory system as necessary. Whilst we are awaiting the imminent reports from two ongoing reviews of the NMC's operations - which we predict may herald significant changes to the NMC's operations - AIMS is keen to draw on our experience of the NMC and its operations to respond to this current consultation.
While AIMS believes that there is an unarguable case for regulatory efficiency and for regulators to widen their scope beyond the function of 'fitness to practice' proceedings, our response cautions that this must not be at the expense of regulatory effectiveness, and we also note that the NMC does not seem to be, from our perspective, the model of regulatory efficiency and effectiveness as suggested in these proposals.
Please CLICK HERE to view AIMS' response to the consultation.
We hope that this page is of interest, especially to our colleagues in the maternity services improvement community.
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AIMS supports all maternity service users to navigate the system as it exists, and campaigns for a system which truly meets the needs of all.