Birthrate Plus ® Supporting safe staffing in the maternity workforce

I was delighted to be invited to join the Expert Advisory Panel, contributing oversight, constructive challenge, and research expertise. The resulting report delivers clear, actionable recommendations to strengthen workforce planning across maternity services.

My involvement in this work is driven by a commitment to ensuring that the education of the future midwifery workforce remains closely aligned with the evolving needs of maternity services. Engaging in the development of the workforce model enables me to help bridge educational preparation with service realities, ensuring that our graduates are equipped to contribute effectively and sustainably to maternity care.

Being part of the Birthrate Plus review has reaffirmed how essential an evidence‑based approach to midwifery staffing is in the context of evolving population health needs. As acuity and complexity rise, ensuring the right midwifery establishment is fundamental to delivering safe, personalised, and equitable care for all women and families.

The birth rate plus tool is now instrumental in our daily operations of the maternity department and our reporting on acuity and staffing needs. It clearly identifies where staff is needed and helps us to mitigate to ensure safe staffing based on the acuity of women and babies. The tool with its capability to collate the data and represent in graphics will assist when planning future resource needs and demonstrating this to our executive team.
The team from birth rate plus have provided wonderful support and training for our team in implementing the tool. This has continued beyond the early stages and they are available to answer queries and spend time with us as maternity leaders so we understand the data.

Working with the team from Birthrate Plus we have been able to improve our weekly and monthly staffing reporting systems and have been able to report robustly on the recommendations from the Ockenden Report.
Using the app has enabled me to have more insight into the data that we are collating daily
The team are always so quick to respond to our requests and have made the transition using the acuity tool across a 4 sited trust a smooth process.

Following implementation of the Birthrate Plus Acuity Tool for Labour Wards across all four sites , I would like to praise the app and it’s creators for it’s simplicity, user-friendliness and assistance in offering a snapshot of workload and acuity to all levels of leaders.

Maternity is a complex and dynamic service, with conditions that can change very quickly. To respond and act appropriately to this, we need tools such as this to present the situation as concisely and accurately as possible. The Birthrate Plus tool allows Labour Ward Coordinators to present their activity and challenges in real time, whilst providing an easy to use audit tool for senior managers. Alongside clinical and management actions, this allows us to better meet the needs of our service, and crucially our service users.

The Birthrate Plus Team have been instrumental in offering support and training to the team, to ease the implementation. We have also been offered weekly reports to continue to embed the app and respond to any issues to have arisen in the initial roll-out.

Overall, the Birthrate Plus Tool has now become an integral part of our activity planning pathway and we look forward to also implementing the ward tool very soon

Birthrate plus is the only midwifery specific tool that has given me the insight and data to model midwifery numbers and skill mix to inform my decision making ensuring that the service is safe and sustainable