Access to Services

We want to make sure pregnant women and birthing people across the whole of Sussex can access safe, high quality services when they need them. You'll have a number of antenatal appointments during your pregnancy, and you'll see a midwife or sometimes an obstetrician (doctor specialising in pregnancy).

Self-referral to Maternity

Accessing maternity services in Sussex for a healthy pregnancy

Whether you’re in the centre of a busy town or live in a rural village, you are entitled to safe, high quality health services throughout your pregnancy. We’re working across the county to make sure outcomes, access and experience are the same for all pregnant people.

At the moment, where you live, the level of deprivation in your area, your age and your ethnicity have all influenced how likely it is that you’ll have a healthy pregnancy. We believe that all pregnant people should have the same, positive experience regardless of these factors.

Your Antenatal Appointments

Our ambitions

Pregnant and birthing people consistently achieve health outcomes that are as good as those who currently have the best outcomes
Babies and infants consistently receive the best possible start in life – improving readiness to learn, educational achievement, income, and economic status over the lifetime
Staff teams having consistently high levels of support to flourish and feel satisfied in their work
Staff and service users are proactively involved in co-production – to ensure services are matched to population need
Long-term system benefits include improved health and quality of life, reduced demand, and reduced cost to health and social care services

How we are helping people in Sussex have safe pregnancies and healthy babies

What we are doing

We are working across the whole of Sussex to try and help more people have safe pregnancies and healthy babies.

When it comes to ensuring equal access to services, here are the things we’re doing:

Using tailored communications and personalised care plans to offer birthing people and their families meaningful choice through their maternity journey and provide targeted, enhanced support to meet their needs based on shared decision-making
Wrapping a network of care around birthing people to proactively manage and support their wellbeing – through maternal medicine networks, perinatal mental health, social support and encouraging healthy behaviours

Providing education, health promotion and targeted support during maternity to reduce risks of perinatal morbidity and mortality and support a healthy start for all children – e.g., through preconception care, smoking cessation, and supportive infant feeding
Supporting staff to give culturally competent care and ensuring that their skill and dedication is recognised, irrespective of their ethnic group
Using up-to-date data on outcomes by ethnicity and deprivation to continuously identify underserved populations, the effectiveness of current service provision and co-produce targeted interventions.

What you can do

Advocate for yourself or choose a birthing partner to advocate for you
Talk to your midwife about your needs during pregnancy and birth, and make sure those needs are in your notes
Get involved – our aim is to design services alongside the people who use them. Use your voice to help us make sure your services meet the needs of pregnant and birthing people.

Birth Partners

Maternity Voice Partnership (MVP)

A Maternity Voices Partnership (MVP) is a team of service users and their families, commissioners, midwives and doctors working together to review and contribute to the development of local maternity care using lived experience to contribute to transforming maternity care. MVP teams champion the voices of women, birthing people and their families.

Sussex Equity & Equality Programme

We are changing our services to improve Perinatal Equity and Equality in Sussex.

Our complete place based plans