CORE training with feedback
Our CORE training is available to frontline healthcare professionals working in maternity care. Our training is available face-to-face or online, for either a full- or half-day.
Watch this short video of Derin, one of our Associate Trainers, explaining a little bit more about Birthrights’ training.
What our core training covers:
- An introduction to human rights and where they come from (primarily the European Convention on Human Rights/Human Rights Act 1998).
- An exploration of key common law judgements relevant to maternity care including Montgomery vs Lanarkshire.
- Consideration of the implications of human rights law and common law cases for maternity care, and what legal obligations doctors and midwives have as NHS employees.
- Practical discussion of case studies and common scenarios in small groups, e.g. consent for induction, maternal request caesarean, request to give birth in a birth centre which does not meet guidelines.
If you are responsible for learning and development at your Trust or hospital and you have any questions about Birthrights training, please get in touch at training@birthrights.org.uk.
Training objectives:
• To ensure all participants understand where human rights come from and how they apply to maternity care
• To ensure all participants understand the implications of Montgomery v Lanarkshire, and other legal cases that are relevant to consent and informed choice
• To ensure all participants have the opportunity to put this understanding into practice by working in small groups looking at real life cases with women and birthing people
• To equip participants to have choice conversations with women and birthing people that facilitate providing the information they need, give professional recommendations and explore alternative options – in order to achieve informed consent
• To equip participants to identify and sensitively challenge behaviour by colleagues that is disrespectful or unsafe
• To reflect on appropriate informal and formal escalation routes if needed to protect women and birthing people’s rights and safety
• To provide a safe space for healthcare professionals to develop their communication practice
- To equip participants to have choice conversations with women and birthing people that facilitate providing the information they need, give professional recommendations and explore alternative options – in order to achieve informed consent.
- To equip participants to identify and sensitively challenge behaviour by colleagues that is disrespectful or unsafe.
- To reflect on appropriate informal and formal escalation routes if needed to protect women and birthing people’s rights and safety.
- To provide a safe space for healthcare professionals to develop their communication practice.
Training that suits you and your team
Our training team will speak to you about what issues and concerns are most common in your team the key learning you want your team to get out of the day, and whether there are any common issues or concerns that have come up for your organisation.
Our team can then tailor the case studies to ensure that we are meeting those learning objectives. We have used themes from previous complaints relevant to the hospital or survey findings from MNVPs to tailor case studies. It is important to us that our training feels as relevant and useful as possible to you and your team.
Tailored sessions
We are really happy to help your organisation and develop a training programme that suits your need if you find that our CORE programme is not what you currently need.
We have worked with organisations such as the Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigation Programme (formerly HSIB) and North West Ambulance Service to shape sessions that are specific to their staff needs and organisational learning needs.
In 2023, Birthrights was asked by a Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS) to provide a bespoke 45-minute training sessions for midwives and paramedics undertaking a pre-hospital obstetric emergency training day. The day included simulation and scenario-based training on key obstetric emergencies in the home setting.
In the afternoon, one of our training co-ordinators presented an overview of the human rights framework and supported the participants to apply this to one of the scenarios they had worked through in the morning. This helped participants to make sense of how to best support a woman or birthing person to make informed decisions and to advocate for their right to accept or decline elements of care in a fast evolving, emergency situation.
Please contact training@birthrights.org.uk so that we can understand your needs and what type of tailored programme will best suit your organisation. We will then be able to provide you with costs. We are a charity and try to keep our costs as accessible as possible.
“After today’s training, I will consider] systemic racism when evaluating care, exploring the barriers to providing interpretation services, consider human rights in relation to care provided in investigations.”
– Maternity investigator who attended Birthrights training in 2023
Our training prices
For our CORE training, our current pricing structure is:
- £1200 for a half-day training session
- £2000 for a full-day training session
These prices are the same for online and face-to-face training.
For our CORE training, we can accommodate up to 20 participants per session.
We particularly welcome the opportunity to train multi-disciplinary teams and we offer a 10% discount to organisations that can ensure representation from midwives, obstetricians, anaesthetists and other relevant disciplines, as well as in-house lawyers or corporate governance representatives.
We provide attendance certificates to the organiser to distribute to participants who attend. A handout of the slides will be sent electronically to the organiser for distribution before or after the session.
After the session
We request feedback from all participants straight after the session, which we then anonymise and share with the organiser. All participants receive a certificate which outlines what session they attended and what the objectives of that session were, and they can use this for CPD and revalidation purposes. Participants also receive a PDF of the slides and access to a Padlet full of resources so that they can continue the learning.
Birthrights will always follow-up with the organisers and discuss how the session was received, and if there is anything else that the hospital or Trust could put in place to support their staff. We pride ourselves on our trainers ensuring the space feels safe and that participants can share their concerns or barriers they feel to upholding rights-respecting care. Training is just one part of creating a rights-respecting maternity care culture, and we want to ensure that leadership has all the information to understand what is needed in their hospital or Trust.
Birthrights is the UK charity that champions respectful maternity care by protecting human rights. We provide advice and legal information to women and birthing people, train healthcare professionals to deliver rights-respecting care and campaign to change maternity policy and systems.