AIMS Journal, 2025, Vol 37, No 2
By The AIMS Campaigns Team
Published written outputs:
1st March: AIMS letter to Professor Mary Renfrew on her report on maternity services in Northern Ireland.
Conferences and group meetings attended:
Various Plan-A project meetings through February and March
5th February: Charities’ and Service Users’ Maternity Continuity of Carer Network (AIMS facilitated)
6th February: Participated in meeting between Maternity Continuity Network and NHS-England
11th February: London Maternity & Midwifery Festival
13th February and April 10th: NHS England Maternity and Neonatal Stakeholder Council
17th February: RCM Research prioritisation project steering group meeting
24th February: Crochet workshop for AIMS piece on human rights in childbirth for Threads of Protest Exhibition
26th February: MuM-PreDiCT Research Project Virtual Dissemination Event, focussing on ways to improve care for pregnant women with two or more long-term health conditions (MLTCs). MuM-PreDiCT Virtual Dissemination Event https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mum-predict-dissemination-event-tickets-1059503697079?aff=oddtdtcreator (Nadia and Jo)
21st March: Facilitated session for third year student midwives at the University of York on ‘Leading and Managing change’ with a focus on physiology-informed practice
21st-23rd March: Doula UK Conference
24th March: Discussion of ‘Justice for Obstetric Violence’ draft survey
25th March: Inaugural Regional Maternity & Neonatal Conference: Committed to Safety: Shaping the Future for Maternity & Neonatal Care in Belfast
8th April: All Ireland Maternity & Midwifery Festival 2025 in Dublin
23rd April: Quality Maternal and Newborn Care film screening and discussion. Documentary set in Mexico, by Janet Jarman, Birth Wars
25/26th April: Annual meeting of the European Network for Childbirth Associations (ENCA), Athens
27th April: AIMS keynote talk at the Rebirth Festival, Plato’s Academy Park, Athens
28th April: Advisory group on research study titled ‘Pilot of Maternity & Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate (MNISA) role: A rapid mixed methods evaluation’ (information about the evaluation and about the MNISA role can be read here)
29th April: MINI (Maternity Inequalities Northern Ireland) Research Group Stakeholders Event ‘Care and support for women and babies after pregnancy’ in Belfast, as part of NIHR Challenge Maternity Disparities Consortium
Who we have been liaising with:
NCT
LGBT Mummies
Best Beginnings
CAHN
Make Birth Better
Birth Companions
What we have been reading/listening to/watching:
New Welsh policy statement on maternity and neonatal services
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.