Call The Midwife star delivers £1,000 maternity kits to midwives to support safe home births
One of the most popular stars of BBC 1 series Call The Midwife has delivered a set of at-home birth kits to help midwives support mothers giving birth across the Midlands and beyond.
Linda Bassett, who plays nurse Phyllis Crane in the long-running drama, met her real-life counterparts recently to hand over 10 Community Midwife Bags, which have been created by Coventry-based charity Baby Lifeline.
Developed in consultation with a multi-professional working group of healthcare professionals, including midwives, paramedics and obstetricians, the bags have 11 different compartments which feature all the necessary equipment needed for each specific stage of labour and birth, as well as emergencies, including blood pressure monitoring equipment, suture kits and a delivery pack.
The bags cost £1,000 each and were funded through an auction held at a charity ball hosted by leading land promoter Richborough.
The ball raised more than £50,000 for the charity and, such was the appetite to support the charity, the initial auctioning of one bag quickly turned into 10 being funded on the night through a series of donations from those across the built environment sector.
Research carried out by Baby Lifeline and supported by the Royal College of Midwives found that 1 in 3 midwives did not feel that their current home birth bag adequately met their needs or was safe for use, whilst 35 per cent said they sourced and purchased the bag/container themselves using personal funds.
At the handover event, hosted at the Birmingham headquarters of professional services group Gateley, midwives from seven different hospitals collected their kits, as well as posing for pictures with the famous hosts.
The Birmingham Women’s Hospital was the recipient of two bags, funded by Persimmon Homes and Gateley, whilst Victoria Infirmary Northwich also received two kits thanks to planning consultancy Asteer and housebuilder Barratt Redrow, who also donated a kit to Solihull Hospital.
St. George’s Hospital, a teaching university in London, also took away two kits thanks to Savills and Gateley.
Elsewhere, Leicester Royal received their very first kit courtesy of Leicester-headquartered M-EC Consulting Group, Queen’s Hospital Burton received their kit thanks to housing developer Tara Group, and Conquest Hospital in East Sussex also received a kit thanks to housebuilder untypical.
Judy Ledger MBE, founded and chief executive of Baby Lifeline, said: “Every mother and baby deserve the safest birth experience possible, no matter the place of birth, so we are incredibly thankful to our generous property partners for their fantastic support.
“We have worked hard to create the gold standard in midwifery equipment and believe that our Community Midwife Bags now offer everything needed to give the safest and best care for home births.
“The midwives really enjoyed meeting Linda and we give thanks to her for her fantastic support and generosity in giving up her time to make the day extra special.”
Baby Lifeline was created when Judy bought an incubator for the maternity unit where she lost her first three babies.
Since then, the charity has supplied more than 1,250 bags to healthcare providers and donated millions of pounds worth of equipment to maternity and neonatal services across the UK and further afield, having been shipped to war-torn Ukraine, rural areas of Malawi following Cyclone Freddy, Turkey, Ugandan hospitals, and New Zealand.
In recent years, Baby Lifeline has moved from purchasing equipment from existing providers to designing, manufacturing and distributing its own equipment, having identified a crucial gap in the equipment provided to community midwives, who look after women giving birth outside of hospital.
Pictured from left to right: Linda Bassett; Tokunbo Giwa, community midwife; Sarah Paramasivam, lead midwife, both St. George’s Hospital; Tim Ledger, partner, Gateley.
