King's College London

During the COVID-19 pandemic, significant reconfigurations were made to maternity care, to deliver this essential service whilst minimising the risk of infection for pregnant/postpartum women and their infants. The RESILIENT project was funded by NIHR to understand the impact of these changes to maternity services, and to establish urgent lessons for maternity services moving forward.

The findings suggest that maternity care provision, although altered substantially, largely preserved pregnancy outcomes, although experiences of care receipt and delivery were poorer. There is evidence to suggest that the current context of maternity care is of a demoralised and depleted workforce. Recommendations include that implementing a co-production learning health system could offer much-needed solutions to improve maternity care delivery, experiences of care, and workplace culture, building resilience to withstand future health system shocks.

Co-production in maternity care was explored in a national Policy Lab, during which participants identified barriers to success, set out their vision for what could be achieved, and suggested possible actions to progress improvement at a local level.

The lab report can be accessed here.