Maternity Services Advisory Committee - mostly doctors!

[south_oz_bella]

Maternity Services Advisory Committee - mostly doctors!

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Hi,

Now that the call for submissions has finished, the Minister for Health and Aging has put together a "Maternity Services Advisory Committee" to discuss and advise on the increased role of midwives and their access to medicare funding - But the majority of the committee members are representatives of doctors, and there are no practicing midwives (let alone independent midwives)!!

Ms Nicola Roxon needs to know that this isn't right! Here is a blog post with more info and email addresses to send your concerns to.

Maternity Services Advisory Committee | Homebirth: Midwife Mutiny in South Australia

This is the email I have written to the Minister for Health and Aging:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to express my concern over the composition of the "Maternity Services Advisory Committee" which will be discussing the expansion of the role of midwives in Australian maternity services and Medicare funding. I am concerned that there are no practicing midwives, let alone independent midwives on this committee. Considering this committee has been formed to advise the future of midwives, I feel the Obstetric/Medical presence on this board is extremely overrepresented and the midwifery presence, especially those whom it directly effects, extremely underrepresented.

As a voter and maternity services consumer, I call for the composition of this committee to be altered to better represent those stakeholders that it impacts the most. These alterations must be undertaken immediately, before the committee sits. The federal government has stated that it will reform Australian maternity services to be a world class, midwife-led system, but this appears to be rhetoric in light of the medical/obstetric influence that the government is bowing to. Our maternity services will never be truly "Midwife-led" if the government takes the concerns of the medical stakeholders over the midwifery stakeholders. The composition of this committee is just one symptom of this, and it needs to be changed for voters to have any continued faith in the Federal Minister for Health.

Yours sincerely,
Mrs Amy M
(address, phone numbers, email address)

[Emily33]

Re: Maternity Services Advisory Committee - mostly doctors!

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Thanks for that link to the blog Amy. From it I got the link to the document listing the members that comprised the advisory committee: maternity+advisery+committee.png (image)

Illogical that they could form an opinion on maternity services without consulting enough midwives. Don't get me started!!!

IMO an inquiry into how this occurred is called for!

[Emily33]

Re: Maternity Services Advisory Committee - mostly doctors!

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You might want to check the discussion happening in this thread What do homebirths and abortions have in common?

In particular see the argument made in post #33 What do homebirths and abortions have in common?, which concludes:

Were any psychologists appointed as members of the Maternity Services Review advisory board? It doesn't appear so: maternity+advisery+committee.png

IMO this is as illogical as coaching an Olympic team without input from a sports psychologist.