Maternity experts have said they are concerned that several hospitals in the Souith East have failed to recruit enough midwives.
Only 5 out of 12 hospital trusts in Kent, Surrey and Sussex have met the NHS target of one midwife to 35 births.
But some of the trusts claimed not to have any midwife vacancies
So why the discrepancy?
As the RCM’s regional officer put it,
“If a trust has no vacancies but is still not meeting the 1:35 ratio, then their establishment figures are wrong to start with.
What happens is that the heads of midwifery go to the director of finance and say I need 30 more midwives, and he looks at her as if she is mad”
So is this another case of a great government headline-grabbing policy not being followed up by enough money to fund it. Or is it that NHS Trusts are setting their own priorities on how they spend our money?
