A UK parenting charity is calling for ‘immediate improvement’ to maternity services as its members\u00a0 are feeling unsupported by the NHS in their postnatal care.<\/p>\n
A new report out this month by the National Childbirth Association (NCT) \u2013 Postnatal Care \u2013 a Cinderella story? Is based on a survey of more than 1,000 first-time mothers, 95 per cent of whom are NCT members.<\/p>\n
To become a member of the NCT costs \u00a339 for the first year \u2013 there is a reduced membership for \u00a32 should a person receive Employment and Support Allowance\u00a0or working tax credit \u2013 just child tax credit alone doesn’t count.<\/p>\n
NCT findings show that the parents they polled felt ‘isolated and abandoned’ by the care they received in hospital.
\nThey didn’t like to see different midwives each time, received conflicting feeding advice and experienced staff shortages.<\/p>\n
A 42 per cent of mums polled felt there were never enough midwives to help them in hospital.<\/p>\n
Those mothers who had operative births \u2013 forceps, ventouse or caesarean found their emotional needs weren’t met within 24 hours to a month after the birth.<\/p>\n
And, 30 per cent who had a caesarean found midwives only kind and understanding some of the time or not at all.<\/p>\n
Head of Campaigns and Public Policy, NCT, Anne Fox said; \u201cIt\u2019s clear postnatal care urgently needs improvement – our report paints a dreadful, shocking picture of care in the UK \u2013 we\u2019re letting women and their babies down.<\/p>\n
\u201cAction is needed to improve postnatal care in UK and we\u2019re calling on every health service to work to improve the support provided and end the situation whereby postnatal care is the Cinderella service.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A UK parenting charity is calling for ‘immediate improvement’ to maternity services as its members\u00a0 are feeling unsupported by the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bristol-news"],"yoast_head":"\n