Independent Shropshire midwife joins legal fight over the right to help mothers-to-be give birth

Independent midwives can currently offer ante natal and post natal care to patients, but not offer birthing services due to a ruling by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) over insurance cover.

Now the Independent Midwives UK (IMUK) is its fight for a judicial review to the High Court this week in a bid to overturn that decision.

Amanda Garside, from north Shropshire, is a leading member of the group which has raised more than £40,000 after a crowd funding campaign.

IMUK board member Amanda Garside said: "The numbers of midwives in general have been falling to an alarming level. The whole profession is feeling under stress. They also feel they are being under valued for the very particular skills, learned over generations, that midwives bring. Many fear that, soon, midwives within the NHS will gradually be phased out, to be replaced with specialist nurses who will fit more easily into hospital systems.

"Already, the tradition of a woman being attended by a single midwife who she can know and trust has gone. Nowadays, mothers-to-be are attended by whichever midwife is on duty. So gradually, the whole experience of giving birth will simply become part of obstetrics, seen as a medical procedure. For all the strengths of the NHS, independent midwives work outside the organisation precisely because they dislike the stress which it entails nowadays, and the requirement to make births fit within a system.

‘Those concerns are however widely shared across the profession. We in Independent Midwives UK have provided support and a professional service to those mothers who would prefer to give birth outside the hospital system, and who still value the ‘Call the Midwife’ gold standard. The NMC’s decision if it stands will mean none of our members will be able to practice again. We will lose over a thousand years of experience and know-how, and all that professional dedication to motherhood."

The review will be heard in London on October 18 and 19. If the NMC’s decision is upheld by the court the IMUK members will be restricted to antenatal and post-natal care only.

The 78-member group said that the judicial review is not concerned with whether the outcome itself is the right one, but whether the process by which the decision was reached was fair and lawful. If IMUK win their case, the NMC must revisit their decision and review the process by which they arrived at it. They can still reject IMUK’s proposals if they can justify the decision. But if IMUK lose their legal challenge, its members will then lose their right to practice.

Independent midwives are able to assist with births if they get NHS work, which Ms Garside said is not a solution to the underlying issue.