My first month as Birthrights’ CEO has been a heady mix of excitement and intensity as I learn more about the work, the future plans and meet the incredible team. I have been relieved to learn that all the things that attracted me to Birthrights are indeed true in practice and some more.
The staff are hugely passionate about the work and come with varied and in-depth knowledge as well as personal experiences around maternity care. All of this adds to a richness of discussions and absolute commitment to improving women and birthing people’s access to rights in maternity care.
It’s great to see that the organisation’s culture of hybrid and flexible working works in practice for staff and the organisation, and there is a strong sense of trust, care and support across the team.
Big thanks to Tracey who acted as interim CEO and to previous Co-CEOs Shanti and Janaki who have supported me with handover.
There is an understanding and deep commitment to anti-racism and anti-oppression across the organisation, from both staff and trustees, as well as an openness to think differently and radically about how we do the work.
There are significant challenges in how we ensure women and birthing people access their rights both due to the significant pressure the NHS is under and the wider external context.
What has been so great to see in action is the unique position that Birthrights is in, to take on those challenges and to uphold human rights. This is evident through our training delivered across the UK to people working in maternity care, the advice and information services and bringing this all together with our campaigns and communications team and our new legal lead to challenge injustice and raise awareness about people’s experiences and human rights in maternity.
We have exciting plans about how we can reach more people with our advice and information and open -source our info and work more in communities to ensure that woman and birthing people can access information about their rights. Super exciting is the ‘Communities Imagine’ project, exploring how we can work in community to create a collective vision about what the maternity care system should look like – and build power to make this happen.
It seems maternity care is always in the news. The upcoming National Maternity Investigation brings a spotlight to the challenges that women and birthing people face and with it an opportunity to push for rights- respecting care.
There is so much that Birthrights is doing and could do, within a year of lots of organisational change. My priorities for the next 3 – 6 months are:
- Stability, support and joy
I want to be able to support staff to bring stability and explore ways to bed down and implement our new strategy as well as a bit of collective joy – to help us do the work.
- A plan to embed Anti-racist practice across the organisation
Working with the team and external support I want us to think practically about how we embed anti oppressive practice across the organisation and what we can all do to be anti-racist.
- Developing communities work
We are at the beginning of our journey to do more work in communities, I want to support the team to develop our campaigning work in this way, with a focus on learning and reflection.