In 2024-25, following expansion of the team, Kernow MNVP worked hard to build connections and reach a range of communities across the breadth of Cornwall and Isles of Scilly. They attended over 45 community projects and events and had the privilege of speaking to hundreds of families, listening to their personal feedback and experiences with maternity care. Over 90 people completed ‘Have Your Say’ forms offering valuable insights and deepened their understanding of what truly matters to parents.

In addition, Kernow MNVP focused their work last year on some key projects and engagement activities:

• Kernow Parenting Journey: Kernow MNVP collaborated with partners and service users to advance the Pregnancy Circles initiative through face-to-face sessions by community teams. including launches in Penrice and Isles of Scilly. This was enhanced by the Personalised Care and Support Plans to help people make informed decisions about their care.
• Maternity Natters Bitesize: This initiative made significant progress, with Kernow MNVP collaborating with the Cornwall IT Services team and healthcare providers to shape website development alignment with Personalised Care and Support Plans.
• 15 Steps to quality care in community maternity services: Kernow MNVP focused their visits with staff, volunteers and service users at community venues in St Austell, Helston and Newquay. Using NHS England’s 15 Steps process, their report contained some recommendations around improvement in communication and information but also highlighted some wonderful areas of good practice.
• Overnight support pilot: Kernow MNVP supported Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust develop a pilot on the postnatal ward to allow birthing people the support of their partner or support person overnight. Following feedback that showed this was an overwhelming positive experience for those that stayed on the ward, it has been agreed that this will be a permanent change.

Susan Bracefield, Chief Nursing Officer at NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board, praised the value of Kernow MNVP’s work: “This year, Kernow MNVP has again demonstrated its role in improving experiences for women and families across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly who are using maternity and neonatal services.

“Through public engagement and close community partnerships, the team ensures local voices are heard at the heart of maternity and neonatal care. Among recent successes, the overnight support pilot on the postnatal ward – now made permanent – is a clear example of the positive change it helps to bring about.

“We are grateful for the work of Kernow MNVP and proud to continue supporting its important mission to champion those who use our maternity and neonatal services.”

Announcing the annual report, Nicki Burnett, Senior Lead for Kernow MNVP, said: “I am so proud of the work we have done this year and so grateful to the leaders across Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust and Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board who have consciously made the decision to invest and support, meaningful and sustainable service user voice even when it is challenging. We hold the voices of our communities at the heart of everything we do.”

More information

Read the full Kernow Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership Annual Report 2024-25

To keep up to date with KMNVPs work or to share your experience of local maternity services:

• Webpage Kernow Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership
• Subscribe to the KMNVP newsletter

During the visits, a group of service users joined Kernow MNVP staff and local midwives and used the NHS England 15 Steps toolkit to observe first impressions of the care environment and interactions with staff. They identified strengths and areas for improvement across five key themes:

• Welcoming and informative
• Safe and clean
• Friendly and personal
• Organised and calm
• Accessible and inclusive.

Overall, the report highlights the value of delivering quality maternity care in community settings and shines a spotlight on Penrice MLU in St Austell as an example of best practice. Common areas for development are identified across the sites, mainly around signage, parking, information and communication, and recommendations are made for improvement in each setting.

Announcing the report, Nicki Burnett, Senior Lead, Kernow MNVP, said: “Kernow MNVP is committed to ensuring that service user voices are at the heart of improvements in maternity and neonatal care. We want to thank everyone who joined us for the 15 Steps visits and contributed so constructively – your personal stories, insights, and recommendations are at the heart of this report.

“Community birth settings have always been an important and integral part of delivering maternity care in Cornwall, not least because of our many dispersed and rural communities. It is important that all families are aware of their maternity care options so that they can make informed choices and create personalised care and support plans that meet their needs.

“Overall, these visits felt like a celebration of our community maternity spaces, with Penrice Birthing Centre clearly demonstrating how to get things right for local families. Service users could see and feel the time, consideration and dedication that has gone into making sure service users have a great maternity experience.

“It’s important that all our maternity care spaces and facilities, whether in hospitals or community settings, contribute to quality care experiences that are safe, inclusive and supportive for all families; the 15 Steps visits enable us to guide improvements where they are needed.”

Kernow MNVP has shared their report with the Local Maternity and Neonatal System and the Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust to guide plans for improving delivery of maternity care across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Kernow MNVP will monitor progress made in these community settings and carry out 15 Steps visits to other settings during 2025.

Susan Bracefield, Chief Nursing Officer, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly NHS Integrated Care Board (ICB), welcomed the report: “The local maternity and neonatal system is incredibly grateful to the Kernow MNVP team for producing this report. The feedback and intelligence contained within the document is vital to supporting the system to continue to develop and deliver safe, personalised services in a meaningful way. We are proud to work so closely with Kernow MNVP and to have the voice of those that use our services embedded within our work.”

More information

Read the full report or share your feedback about maternity or neonatal care in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

KMNVP engages with maternity and neonatal service users from across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly and represents their views by working with care providers and decision makers to design, develop and improve maternity and neonatal care at a local and national level.

In 2023-24, KMNVP sat alongside maternity and neonatal professionals on over 30 regular strategic planning and decision-making meetings and co-production project groups. The broad range of topics covered included patient safety and quality surveillance, birth planning and choices, perinatal mortality, birth trauma, multiple births, maternal mental health, perinatal pelvic health, parenting support, infant feeding, equity and access to services.

In addition, KMNVP focused their work last year on some key projects and engagement activities:

• Personalised Maternity Care and Support: KMNVP brought local service users and professionals together to coproduce a revised, more accessible, Personalised Maternity Care Plan to help people make informed decisions about their care.
• Kernow Parenting Journey: KMNVP collaborated with partners and service users to develop and coproduce a new approach to providing accessible and effective information and support for local parents, including a new antenatal programme offering face-to-face support and new digital resources including videos and a website.
• 15 Steps to providing quality maternity care: KMNVP visited Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust with staff, volunteers, service users and midwives, to carry out their annual ’15 Steps for Maternity Challenge’. They used NHS England’s 15 Steps process to evaluate maternity services and recommended actions to support change and improvement.
• Neonatal care: KMNVP gathered feedback from people who had received care from the neonatal unit or transitional care ward at RCHT and reported back to the neonatal leadership team at the RCHT. This resulted in the Trust developing personalised maternity outreach for people who have just given birth, even if they are on the neonatal unit with their baby; and a project to minimise separation of babies from parents and swift and compassionate communication when separation is unavoidable.
• Multiple births: The KMNVP team brought service users and professionals together to share experiences, feedback and ideas to help shape RCHT’s new specialist care pathway for multiple births.
• New national MNVP guidance: KMNVP supported NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly ICB and NHS England to develop new guidance, providing a national framework for Local Maternity and Neonatal Systems to effectively commission and set up a MNVP.

Susan Bracefield, Chief Nursing Officer, NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board, highlighted the value of KMNVP’s work, commenting: “Kernow Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership is a key player within our system, capturing the voices of local people and ensuring they influence how services are delivered, and this annual report describes many great examples. Their success is recognised at a national level, as seen in the recent all party parliamentary review on birth trauma and in the recently published national guidance for MNVPs. Nationally, maternity and neonatal services have continued to receive a high level of scrutiny through a series of national reports and publicity. A key theme from these reports puts listening to and working with women and families at the heart of improvements that need to be made. NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board highly values the role of KMNVP in making this a great strength in Cornwall.”

Announcing the annual report, Nicki Burnett, Senior Lead for Kernow Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership, said: “We’re proud of what we have achieved by working with local people and partners and I want to thank everyone who has shared their experience and supported our work. As we move forward, we renew our commitment to the families of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly that we will champion your voice, be vocal about the need for equitable and accessible services for the most marginalised and vulnerable families in our communities and use what you share with us to support the oversight and assurance of quality care.”

More information

Read the full Kernow Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership Annual Report 2023-24

To keep up to date with KMNVPs work or to share your experience of local maternity services:

• Webpage Kernow Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership
• Subscribe to the KMNVP newsletter

Evolving Communities is a community interest company which specialises in gathering and reporting people’s views and experiences of health and social care to help drive and guide improvements in services. The company has extensive experience of delivering independent local Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnerships and has been running Somerset MNVP and Devon MNVP for several years, as well as several local Healthwatch services and a broad range of national and local community engagement projects.

Evolving Communities will manage and support the local team to raise awareness of KMNVP, to engage with people who use maternity and neonatal services, and to share their feedback and insight with those who provide care to help shape local services.

Lucie Woodruff, CEO of Evolving Communities, said: “To provide quality maternity and neonatal care, services need to understand how to meet the needs of their diverse local communities. We are delighted to be supporting our KMNVP team to connect with local people and champion their views. We look forward to working with maternity and neonatal care professionals to ensure continued development and improvement in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and to sharing good practices across all our MNVP services in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset.”

Aisling Crombie, Director of Nursing at NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board, said: “Kernow Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership has a vital role in ensuring that we engage with, listen to, and take influence from local women and their families throughout the perinatal journey. Evolving Communities have demonstrated their values and experience in this area. We look forward to growing their role in working together, as part of our ongoing commitment to delivering excellent NHS maternity services for the people of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.”

Find out more and get in touch to share your views and experiences with Kernow Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership

• Subscribe to the KMNVP newsletter
• Volunteer with KMNVP – kathryn@kernowmnvp.co.uk
• Email the team and follow KMNVP on social media: Facebook | Instagram | X

Look out for KMNVP’s Annual Report 2023-24 to be published this month.