Dear Cheryl Cooper

Although now retired i am interested in what you are hoping to achieve. My
concern however, is your seemingly lack of experience  "with home births".
Putting together a proposal is very good but have you considered getting
clinical experience and knowledge of home births? I would think this is
vital part of you and your colleague's preparation if you want to convince
your manager of the benifits of making major changes in midiwfery practice.

I was very lucky in that much of my clinical  experience as a student was in
the community in a multi ethnic area of LOndon and home births were still
relatively common.~Following qualitification, I spent the next 25 years in
hospital practice before taking the plunge and work as community midwife. I
had to relearn a lot of my midwifery practice and I was glad of all of the
help and advice of my new colleagues. I don't want to put you off but you've
got a lot of hard work ahead.   YOu have to convice your midwifery managers
which will be difficult. What may be more difficult is convincing the
obstetricians and this may be even more difficult.  If I can be of any help
please contact me. Good luck.

Best wishes

MaryJane Somers-Smith


>From: Cheryl Cooper <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Caseload midwifery <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Introduction
>Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 04:17:51 EDT
>
>In a message dated 24/05/2004 15:25:48 GMT Standard Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
> >If you would like to chat then let me know and I would be happy to  help.
>What part >of Scotland are you in? You could always invite me up to
>present our
>work and I >could help you convince your HOM. I'm Dunfermline  born and
>trained. Look forward >to hearing from  you.
>Hi Maggie
>I'm in Dundee.  It would be great to have you come up and speak to us,  our
>HOM doesn't know of our plans yet - we're trying to work out a proposal
>that
>will sound so good she won't want to refuse (but in reality we have little
>idea
>  how to go about it!!)  I got a proposal from a mw who was given a
>contract
>for group practice at the Kings (I think it was that hosp), but it is based
>on
>  the fact that they already had some group practices set up and we need to
>do
>it  from scratch.
>My colleague and I were at RCM conference last week and felt so inspired by
>many of the speakers that we just want to go for it for ourselves, neither
>of
>us  have beeen involved with home births and we'd love to offer that and mw
>assessment at home in early labour with choice to stay home, which I
>believe is
>  facilitated by the woman knowing the mw and vice versa....rambling now
>sorry.  And of course this is a public health issue, as there seem to be
>better
>outcomes  at home, probably due to fact there isn't the cascade of
>intervention
>associated  with hosp.
>Would love to speak to lots of people regarding this - not many on this
>list
>yet???
>Cheryl

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