AIMS Journal, 2025, Vol 37, No 4
What has the AIMS Campaigns Team been up to this quarter?
By The AIMS Campaigns Team
Published written outputs:
19th August: Peer review of RCOG Good Practice Paper – Provision of Planned Caesarean Birth Services in the UK
9th September: Stakeholder comments on the NICE draft guideline Intrapartum Care: Waterbirth, second stage of labour
30th September: AIMS comment on ‘Fit for the Future’ the Government’s 10-year plan for the NHS
Conferences and group meetings attended:
August - October: various meetings of the National collective working group on the National Maternity review
2nd August: Breastival NI, a unique, award-winning festival in Northern Ireland which supports, normalises and celebrates breastfeeding as part of everyday life.
9th September: National Voices meeting with Karin Smyth, Minister of State for Health and Social Care, on the 10-year plan for the NHS.
11th September: Launch of the MBRRACE-UK report Saving Lives, Improving Mothers' Care 2025 - Lessons learned to inform maternity care from the UK and Ireland Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths and Morbidity 2021-23
25th September: The National Maternity & Perinatal Audit (NMPA) Clinical Review Group meeting
9th October: Launch of the MBRRACE-UK report Perinatal Mortality Surveillance: UK perinatal deaths of babies born in 2023
16th October: NHS-E Maternity and Neonatal Programme (MNP) Stakeholder Council meeting.
Who we have been liaising with:
12th August: Make Birth Better’s new CEO Laura-Rose Thorogood attended part of the Campaign Steering Group meeting.
What we have been reading/listening to/watching:
National Maternity and Perinatal Audit’s (NMPA) ‘State of the Nation’ report, part of their Clinical Audit Publications
MBRRACE Saving Lives, Improving Mothers' Care 2025 and Perinatal Mortality Surveillance report 2025
NMC Principles for supporting women's choices in maternity care
UK Network of Professors in Midwifery and Maternal and Newborn Health policy briefing
UK Preconception Partnership’s Preconception care toolkit
Disparities in Stillbirths in England: Analysis of A Population-Based Study of 1.3 Million Births
Thanks to all the AIMS Campaigns Volunteers who have made this work possible. We are very keen to expand our campaigns team work, so please do get in touch with campaigns@aims.org.uk if you’d like to help!
The AIMS Journal spearheads discussions about change and development in the maternity services.
AIMS Journal articles on the website go back to 1960, offering an important historical record of maternity issues over the past 60 years. Please check the date of the article because the situation that it discusses may have changed since it was published. We are also very aware that the language used in many articles may not be the language that AIMS would use today.
To contact the editors, please email: journal@aims.org.uk
We make the AIMS Journal freely available so that as many people as possible can benefit from the articles. If you found this article interesting please consider supporting us by becoming an AIMS member or making a donation. We are a small charity that accepts no commercial sponsorship, in order to preserve our reputation for providing impartial, evidence-based information.
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.