We are delighted to invite you to our next Midwifery and Maternal Health webinar, which will hear from the CORE multidisciplinary team led by Dr Rebecca Whybrow, funded by the NIHR HSDR stream. The team are carrying out a mixed-methods formative evaluation to explore and enhance the rollout and impact of the Core Competency Framework (CCF) and to strengthen its implementation and impact across England with the aim of improving maternity and neonatal care in England.

Please note this will be recorded and sent out after the event - so do sign up if you just wish to receive the recording.

About the study:

Title: Improving maternity and neonatal care in England: protocol for a formative evaluation of the implementation of the Core Competency Framework to enhance multi-professional practice.

Background: Concern exists about the variation in maternity services across England, highlighted by various high-profile investigations into care failures. In response, NHS England developed the Core Competency Framework (CCF) to standardise training and reduce unwarranted discrepancies in maternity and neonatal care. The current version of the framework (CCFv2) outlines minimum training requirements, targets key areas of harm, and supports multi-professional education while allowing local adaptation. This study aims to explore and enhance the rollout and impact of the CCFv2 and to strengthen its implementation and impact across England.

Methods: We will conduct a mixed-methods formative evaluation across four work packages. WP1: a national survey of maternity units to assess adoption and variation in CCFv2 implementation. WP2: ethnographic research in seven purposively selected maternity units to explore variations in local implementation. WP3: retrospective analysis of routinely collected outcome data from these sites to assess effects on practice and patient safety. WP4: Joint Interpretive Forums with stakeholders at each study site and nationally to support shared understanding and inform the development of an implementation toolkit for CCFv3.

Discussion: This study will generate practical insights into how the CCF is embedded across diverse settings. Through a collaborative, multi-disciplinary design - including input from service users, NHS staff, and academics - it will identify enablers and barriers to implementation and inform future improvements. Findings will guide the development of CCFv3 and support national efforts to improve care quality and reduce variation, particularly for vulnerable populations.

About Midwifery and Maternity Health Research Group

The Midwifery & Maternal Health Research Group is developing a programme of high-quality research to foster improvements to the delivery, outcomes and experiences of maternity care services. Our research is underpinned by the Lancet’s Midwifery framework for quality maternal and newborn care (QMNC). The QMNC is based on a definition of midwifery which encompasses skills, attitudes and behaviours, rather than specific professional roles. Therefore, while rooted in midwifery practice, our work goes beyond professional boundaries to centre childbearing women, people and their families.

Staff work within the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care, in close collaboration with the Life Course Sciences Women & Children’s Health Department. We are also forging research networks and collaborations with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience and Philosophy & Medicine. Additionally, the team bring their existing wider networks, service-user and clinician partnerships and collaborations that will develop and enhance the research profile.

We bring together our diverse but inter-related fields of interest. These have previously included modifiable risk factors for stillbirth, maternity care experiences for those who have experienced childhood sexual abuse, midwifery practices in facilitating complex physiological birth and improving maternity care for women with pre-existing medical conditions. Together, our work will continue to consider the outcomes and experiences of those receiving care, and those delivering care to address some of the key issues facing maternity services today - https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/midwifery-maternal-health.