Anti-Racism Manifesto
As a company, our mission has always been to make birth education more accessible for all, because we believe everyone deserves equal access to the knowledge, tools and support for the best birth possible. In aid of that mission, we’ve so far focused on removing financial and geographical barriers. However, we realise we have overlooked how significantly white privilege contributes to a positive birth experience and have not explored in any depth the specific barriers that might prevent minority groups from engaging in antenatal education.
2020
The Black Lives Matter movement highlighted the disparity in maternal mortality rates between Black, Mixed Race and Asian women and their white counter parts in the UK. The former group being four times more likely to die in pregnancy, childbirth and the 6 week postpartum period compared to the latter - It is clear the gap is still yet to be closed and urgent action is needed within our healthcare system. In light of this, we adjusted our focus and set out our firm commitments for change with our anti-racism manifesto. One of our pledges was to produce educational materials in collaboration with experts for anyone working within antenatal services for free circulation within the NHS and beyond.
2021
Along with new commitments in our business, we commissioned a workshop with Five X More Co-Founders called ‘Navigating Pregnancy as a Black Woman/Birthing Person’. We shared the progression we had been making within the business against our manifesto - See slides below.
2022
Closing the gap: addressing racial disparities in antenatal services and birth outcomes was commissioned and distribution of the workshop started to healthcare professionals within the NHS via our partnership with the South West AHSN (Academic Health & Science Networks) Whilst we have made many changes within our own business to support this harrowing statistic, we knew that change needed to come from within our healthcare system. It is our mission to make this workshop mandatory for all healthcare professionals in antenatal services within the NHS.
2024
We are working closely with the Royal College of Midwives as part of a steering board to shape the The Decolonising Midwifery Education Toolkit. The toolkit has been created for midwifery educators and supporting stakeholders to ensure education is inclusive and addresses the diverse maternity care needs of women and birthing people from the global majority. It also aims to improve the experiences of global majority students.