Celebrating a year of coproduction in Somerset

Last year, SMVP represented maternity service users and worked with maternity care providers and decision makers to design, develop, and improve maternity care at a local, regional, and national level. They have made sure that services understand people’s needs and use their expertise to develop innovative and effective solutions.

SMVP and its volunteers worked with NHS partners on a broad range of coproduction projects last year, including:

• Design and implementation of a new Somerset Maternal Mental Health Service (working with Somerset CCG and Maternal Mental Health Teams).
• Design and production of Somerset’s pregnancy and baby loss personalised care plan to improve the quality and consistency of bereavement care (working with Somerset NHS Hospital Trusts).
• Improving communications and support for Black, Asian and minority ethnic families, through production of an operational policy and the creation of leaflets that were translated into 20 different languages to be given to all Black, Asian and other ethnic minority women being looked after in Somerset (working with the Somerset Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS)).
• Development of communications materials to support Somerset Public Health’s Healthy Pregnancy Project and guiding their work with service users (working with the LMNS Public Health Midwife).

In addition, the Chair of SMVP, Donna Butland, sat alongside maternity service professionals on over 50 strategic planning, decision-making and project groups, making sure the voices of maternity service users are heard and acted on at the highest level.

Find out more:

Somerset Maternity Voices Partnership Impact Report (2020-2021)