In January 2016 Ireland’s first National Maternity Strategy Creating a Better Future Together was published. The strategy is a roadmap for the improvement of services over the next ten years and identifies four priorities:
- Adopting a Health & Wellbeing approach to ensure that babies get the best start in life. Mothers and families should be supported and empowered to improve their own health and wellbeing;
- Access to safe, high-quality, nationally consistent, woman-centred maternity care;
- Recognising pregnancy and birth as a normal physiological process, and insofar as it is safe to do so, a woman’s choice in pregnancy and childbirth should be facilitated;
- Resourcing maternity services should be appropriately, underpinned by strong and effective leadership, management and governance arrangements, and delivered by a skilled and competent workforce, in partnership with women.
The Strategy will be delivered through a new National Women & Infants’ Health Programme, and care in each case will be offered by multi-disciplinary teams. Expectant mothers will be offered choices about their care during pregnancy and birth, ranging from home birth to specialised assistance, depending on the level of risk involved in each case.
