Women left without homebirth services as review into mother's death continues
Birth In Giving After A 2022 Her June To Liston Following Child Homebirth Laura Died First
Women across Limerick, Clare, and North Tipperary remain without access to homebirths as an external review into a maternal death in June 2022 continues.
Laura Liston died after giving birth to her first child in early June following a homebirth.
A pause was put on these services locally during a review of the circumstances of her death.
Aisling Dixon, chair of the Community Midwives Association, said the service has become “stagnant”.
“We don’t know anything about the review,” she said.
“We would like to think if there was an immediate improvement that needed to be made, that we would already know about it.
Speaking during the AGM of maternity advocacy group AIMS Ireland in Dublin on Saturday, she said a resolution is needed.
“It just means women in that area really are unable to have homebirths; the service there has become stagnant. It is not going to develop,” she said.
“The HSE has put a lead for homebirth into Limerick hospital but her hands are tied because she can’t offer services to women.”
The service is under the governance of the UL Hospital Group as part of a national move to transfer governance of homebirths from community healthcare to hospitals.
A spokesman said: “The home birth service in the Midwest remains temporarily suspended pending the outcome of an external review, which is ongoing.
“We regret this disruption in service to women and families.”
Ms Dixon also told the of broader challenges facing homebirth services nationally due to the slow pace of integration with hospitals.
“There are some issues in areas where there are midwives wanting to join the services, but that is not being facilitated,” she said.
“We think that is because nobody knows what integration is going to look like. And now managers seem to be caught between two stools. They are neither assigning SECMs [self-employed community midwives] or developing an integrated service.”
The AIMS meeting heard that the latest HSE figures show 0.7% of births around Ireland are homebirths.