Trust Board Febuary 2010 - Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals

SWBTB (2/10) 035 (a)
doctor during your pregnancy puts your mind at rest and you have trust in them. Also I can only
speak from my community but mothers with ethnic backgrounds have difficulty interacting with
different people and get confused and lack confidence to ask questions”. Women in one focus
group commented how difficult it was to have to keep explaining the same things time and
again to different midwives.
One focus group participant felt it was not appropriate to wait a long time in a triage room
(with male partners of other women) when in labour.
African
Overall, 48% of African respondents preferred option 1
Most African respondents live within relatively easy reach of City Hospital, including a cluster in
Smethwick, mostly made up of Somali women. There are 2 specific comments from other
African respondents, one happy with City and the other happy with the status quo.
Somali women
The need to engage the Somali community in the consultation was highlighted in the preconsultation
Equalities Impact Assessment. No-one identified as ‘Somali’ on questionnaires so
Somali respondents may have identified as ‘African’. 7 women from Somalia attended a focus
group, all had children, and some had given birth at City Hospital and some at Sandwell. The
general feeling from this group was that Sandwell had a better reputation in the Somali
community than City Hospital, especially when catering for women who did not speak English
fluently and couldn’t communicate their needs. One woman who had delivered at both City and
Sandwell found staff at Sandwell to be more helpful, they gave her more attention and
consulted her more. Her experience was that at City people just made decisions for her. What
was important for her was being treated with respect and consulted about decisions affecting
her. Other women in the group agreed that although City was closer and Sandwell more
difficult to access on public transport, City had a poor reputation in the community.
Women knew they had choices about whether or not to have a natural birth but their view was
that if things go wrong, the doctor decides what to do. The group explained that nobody in the
Somali community has home births. FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) is an issue in the
community which brings with it a higher risk of pregnancy and birth complications and this is
why women do not choose to have home births.
There was a consensus in the group that Option 3 would be their preferred option. As a group
they had mainly had normal births and would prefer a separate site with just midwives. The
group felt that people with complications should be in hospital but for everyone else all they
need is a midwife. Option 2 was seen as being their second choice.
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