Jersey’s home birth service is on track to be reinstated after specialist training is provided to midwives this summer – but the service would need “significant investment” to be offered full-time.
Ros Bullen-Bell, the island’s Director of Midwifery, provided an update on the “temporary suspension” of the home birth service today at a special scrutiny hearing dedicated to women’s health matters.
It comes after Express revealed that Jersey’s home birth service was suspended in October to carry out an internal review of protocols, staff training, and resources.
It later emerged that 40 local midwives had to receive home birth training from UK company Baby Lifeline before the service could be restarted.
The training was initially due to take place in Jersey in April or May this year, but the Baby Lifeline website confirmed that the course date is not until July.
Ms Bullen-Bell today said that she couldn’t confirm exactly when Jersey’s home birth provision would restart – but confirmed that her “intention is absolutely to recommend its reinstatement”.
She said: “I can’t give you a timeline but I will be going to our Chief Officer in July to give him the assurance that I feel we are ready to reinstate [the home birth service], and then it’s for him to make that decision.”
But Ms Bullen-Bell noted that “significant investment” would be needed to offer the service full-time.
She said: “Our priority is to try and make sure we have a home birth service, but we will never ever be able to offer it 100% [of the time] because if it was that we were busy in the unit, we would have to look at our activity and staffing.
“My intention is to make sure that our staffing is utilised effectively and efficiently for every single woman that requires maternity care at any one given time.”
Ms Bullen-Bell added: “If it was that I was able to offer the home birth service 100% [of the time], we’d have to have significant investment in the number of midwives that we have on our books.”
During the hearing today, the Health Minister also confirmed that he did not intend to take forward plans to make the home birth service a paid-for provision.
Deputy Tom Binet explained that he suggested the charge “in the context of if the population generally wanted a 100% guaranteed 24/7 [home birth service] – which Ros [Bullen-Bell] has rightly pointed out would cost a significant amount of money”.
“The service can only be offered to the extent to which it can be afforded within the current budget,” he said.
“We’ve never had a [home birth] service that was guaranteed 24/7.”
Ms Bullen-Bell added: “To have that, you’d have to have an awful lot more midwives.”
“We want to try and make sure that every midwife is trained so that we can give the best opportunity to be able to have a home birth if that’s their choice,” she said.
