Rejected petition Statutory Supervision of Midwives

The Nursing and Midwifery Council have accepted the Kings Fund recommendation and have decided to end Midwifery Supervision. They have called into question the fundemental principle of Supervision - the protection of women and their babies and have also questioned the impartiality of Supervisors when they are conducting investigations, following a clinical incident involving their peers. They also claim that Supervision is an unnecessary level of regulation. The safety of women and babies will be severely compromised if Midwifery Supervision is not maintained as a Statutory regulation. Supervision also provides a level of clinical support for Midwives that is not available from any other source. We should not be disbanding Supervision, we should be enhancing it and insisting that our Nursing colleagues introduce this statutory level of regulation. We call upon the Governnent to instruct the Nursing and Midwifery Council to maintain Supervision of Midwives as a statutory regulation.