17th June 2026
Dear Michelle
The AIMS Campaigns Team, and AIMS more broadly, would like to warmly welcome you to your new role as National Maternity Advisor.
We look forward to working with you, as you develop your role as part of the wider maternity services improvement community.
As you may be aware, AIMS - the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services - is one of the 'originals' in this space, founded in 1960. We are a lay organisation. Our work is carried out by a core group of enthusiastic and dedicated volunteers, predominantly women who have used the maternity services and been motivated by their own experience to improve the services for others. We benefit from the wide range of skills and experience that our volunteers bring from their other roles, both from within the birth world and from other professional capacities.
We have worked tirelessly over the decades, developing a depth and breadth of knowledge that enables us to play a respected part in ensuring that the maternity services are fit for purpose. We have learnt much along the way, involving ourselves as much as we can in national activities where we think we can help to make a difference. This has included our long-standing roles as members of the NHS-England Stakeholder Council, MBRRACE Stakeholder group and NMPA Clinical Reference Group.
We have seen so much improvement over the years, but also some very worrying back-sliding. We are particularly proud of our work which has directly improved NICE guidelines over the years, to ensure that women get the evidence-based support they need but remain the decision-maker in their maternity care. We have spoken up about the need for respectful and humanised maternity services that truly listen to women and centre their needs. We have drawn attention to the reality of obstetric violence and to the lack of equity in the maternity services. We make the case for a physiology-informed maternity service. We call for real choice with regards to where and how women can labour and birth with access to the support they choose. And much more. This is all work in progress.
If we were to pick out one issue, we are particularly keen to discuss and better understand your thinking around what we see as the essential shift to community-based midwifery continuity of carer. This evidence based approach to underpinning a functional maternity service has, quite rightly, been national policy since the Changing Childbirth report in 1993, and was restated following the Better Births report (2016). But political commitment, accountability and transparent monitoring are key, to help us avoid another implementation failure. We will be reading the forthcoming reports from Donna and Valerie with a keen eye to this policy. As longstanding members of the NHS England's Stakeholder Council and now a member of the DHSC Charities and Third Sector Expert Reference Group, we will be reflecting urgently on how this new input sits alongside that existing initiative, and work collaboratively to seek it's inclusion in the new national action plan for comprehensive reform.
We assume that you will have been flooded with requests for meetings since your appointment, and there will have been calls enough on your time before that. Nevertheless, it may be that a short introductory call would be of mutual benefit, aside from any contact we may have at group meetings.
Once again, we very much look forward to working with you.
Kind regards
Jo Dagustun
On behalf of the AIMS Campaigns Team
We hope that this page is of interest, especially to our colleagues in the maternity services improvement community.
The AIMS Campaigns Team relies on Volunteers to carry out its work. If you would like to collaborate with us, are looking for further information about our work, or would like to join our team, please email campaigns@aims.org.uk.
You are welcome to quote from or link to this article in your own work to improve maternity services but please credit AIMS as the source. If you are using a quote please include the following words: “Quote from the AIMS article {URL}. AIMS is a charity that works towards better births for all by campaigning and information sharing, protecting human rights in childbirth and helping maternity service users to know their rights, whatever birth they want, and wherever they want it. See www.aims.org.uk
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