The Albany Midwifery Practice in Peckham, South London, provided a caseload midwifery model of care for around 200 women per year for the past 12 years, operating in the community as a
self-employed, self-managed partnership under contract to King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Peckham is the 14th most deprived district out of 354 districts in England.

The Albany has given genuine choice to the women whom it served about place of birth and provided continuity of carer throughout pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period. It has been carefully evaluated and is precisely the kind of individualised maternity care advocated in government strategy documents since 1993. The latest national maternity policy, ‘Maternity Matters’, states ‘every woman will be supported by a midwife she knows and trusts throughout her pregnancy and afterwards so as to provide continuity of care’ (DH, 2008)

The Albany Midwives cared for a caseload of local women regardless of their perceived medical or social risk. Their perinatal mortality rate however (4.9/1000 from 1997-2007) is lower than the national average (7.9/1000 for England and Wales 2006, CEMACH 2008) and far lower than the average for Southwark borough as a whole (11.4/1000 from 2003-5, Southwark PCT 2007)

The Albany has provided safe, woman-centred care for local women and their families, who think very highly of the service. Yet King’s has forced the service to close down by terminating their contract with the Albany. Why are women and babies being denied safe birth in one of the few pockets of genuine woman-centred care in Britain?

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