As you may be aware, the NHS is facing up to 50% staff absence due to Covid. This is in part due to staff contracting Covid from patients they care for. This has led to restrictions on services, banning of visitors and birth partners in some hospitals and a multitude of hospitals cancelling services – be that face to face appointments or home birth services.
Our absence rate is less that 5%. We do not ask you to wear a mask, but our midwives do wear PPE to protect our clients during appointments. We believe, when our midwives are in your home for long periods of time -typically 1-2hrs per visit, it is important for the safety of you, our staff and our other clients that we have assurance that no-one is passing on the virus. The tests are freely available, free of charge, so we believe this small inconvenience is a small price to pay. In addition, we limit the number of clients our midwives see. Typically they are only visiting two families each day. This reduces the chance of passing the virus between people.
We have been able to continue to provide our service and for the past 21 months. Our approach has developed and evolved over time and it has worked extremely well for us. We have never cancelled any services to date. Our priority is the safety of all of our staff and all of our clients. We are saddened to read that for you, this is something you are not prepared to do and so we will not be providing your care.