The Maternity Safety Training Fund: an evaluation

Context: Following the publication of Better Births (National Maternity Review, 2016), and to support the Government’s target of halving stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths by 2025, Health Education England introduced the Maternity Safety Training Fund to distribute over £8.1 million to NHS trusts with maternity services in England. The purpose of this initiative was to fund multidisciplinary training to improve maternity safety and care for mothers and babies. Health and Social Care Evaluations was commissioned to conduct an evaluation of the impacts and outcomes of the Maternity Safety Training Fund. Methodology: The evaluation was based on a realist methodology and used a mixed methods approach: quantitative analysis of the survey data collected by Health Education England from 128 trusts in 2017/2018 and qualitative data collection through semi-structured interviews with 10 trusts. Key findings: Contexts: - In total, 30,945 training places were delivered through the Maternity Safety Training Fund. - A wide range of maternity professional groups engaged with the training courses. - The trusts selected 41 courses from the Maternity Safety Training Catalogue and the ten most popular courses were: PROMPT, Child Birth Emergencies in the Community, Human Factors in Healthcare Trainers Course, CTG Masterclass, Labour Ward Leaders Workshop, Resilience Training for Maternity Healthcare Professionals, Newborn Life Support (NLS), Management of Labour Ward, Advanced CTG Masterclass and Maternal Critical Care. Mechanisms: - The funding of maternity safety training, both prior to the initiative and in the future, can be an issue for some trusts. - Courses delivered in face-to-face formats with multi-professional groups were particularly valued by the trusts. Outcomes: - The trusts have successfully incorporated their learning and training skills into their mandatory programmes. - The maternity safety training has impacted on everyday practice through: increasing confidence and empowering the maternity staff; enhancing skills, knowledge and awareness; improving multi-professional working and communication; improving patient safety; and encouraging cultural change. Conclusions and recommendations: - The Maternity Safety Training Fund has enabled a significant number of maternity staff to be trained, across many professional groups, and on a broad range of courses. - The funding initiative presented a unique opportunity for the trusts to upskill their workforce and develop pathways for sustaining the learning through extending their mandatory training programmes, creating champions and training staff in key positions to disseminate the knowledge through everyday practice. - Positive outcomes and sustainable learning can be achieved through identifying relevant maternity staff to train, selecting courses to meet the contextual needs of the service, training staff through face-to-face mechanisms with multi-professional groups, and disseminating the learning through mandatory training programmes. - Ongoing financial support is needed to ensure that the benefits of the funding initiative and the impacts of the maternity safety training are sustained in the future