I invite you to read/sign the petition for the return of the Albany Midwifery Practice in Peckham, south of London. You do not need to be from there to sign ! It’s easy, quick, and if it can make other women’s lives better, who’s the merrier ?
Here is how they describe their practice:
The Albany Midwifery Practice in Peckham, south London, has been providing safe, woman centred care for women from deeply disadvantaged backgrounds for twelve years. Peckham ranks as the fourteenth most deprived district of 354 districts in England.
The Albany has been thoroughly evaluated twice, has a far lower Caesarean section rate than King’s College Hospital (14.4% compared with 24.1%) and a far lower perinatal mortality rate (4.9/1000 compared with 11.4/1000) for Southwark Borough as a whole.
The Albany gives genuine choice to the women whom it serves about place of birth and choice of midwife at birth. National maternity policy states that all women should have such a choice by 2009.
The Albany is providing safe, woman-centred care for vulnerable women who want and depend on this care. Yet Kings is forcing the service to close down its birth service at home and to limit its continuity of care. Why are women and babies being denied safe birth in one of the few pockets of genuine woman-centred midwifery-led care in Britain?
