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North Birmingham Maternity Voices Partnership Chair

Maternity Voices Partnership Chairs

Having recently undergone a significant restructuring of the Birmingham and Solihull Maternity Voices Partnership, we are now looking to appoint a Maternity Voices Partnership (MVP) Chair who will work across North Birmingham supporting women and families to feedback on their experiences of using maternity services to improve and develop services and to ensure women and families are involved in the co-production of services and changes to existing provisions.

What is the MVP? 

The MVP is a diverse working group of service users who have recent experience using maternity care.  Members also include health care professionals like midwives and obstetricians, commissioners like public health workers from Birmingham Council and the Integrated Care System (formerly known as the CCG), and anyone else who supports families during their pregnancy and with a new baby. This includes people like birth workers and voluntary organisations.

The most important role of the MVP is to listen to service users’ thoughts and ideas about their experiences of care, and then ensure those are at the heart of the design, delivery and evaluation of services. This is what we mean by ‘co-production’. 

Some of the ways the MVP does this is by:

  • Gathering service user feedback through our online social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter). This is ongoing and is constantly evolving and developing, and we would encourage Chairs to play an active part in both gatherings and feeding back information through social media.
  • Hosts quarterly MVP meetings chaired by a service user with service user-protected time – Providing input to nationwide/regional initiatives as well as supporting at a local level – e.g. Ockenden Report
  • Co-production of resources and documents – e.g. websites, leaflets and communication online – Both attending and hosting outreach events in community locations to hear from women, families and organisations
  • Working with providers and the LMNS BUMP on specific projects like Digital Notes App, Smoking Support, Pelvic Health. This is usually supported through workstreams as shown on the service structure.
Responsibilities

We are currently seeking one chair to cover the geographical area of West Birmingham. Families in this area receive maternity care at Good Hope Hospital. It involves close partnership with the South and East Birmingham geographical chairs for BSoL LMNS and working alongside the service user leads.

The key elements of the Chair’s role are to ensure engagement with service users, women and families and organisations supporting them to ensure their voices, experiences and feedback are both heard and amplified and fed into maternity systems through relevant channels. Chairs should ensure that regular (minimum of quarterly) meetings take place as well as engagement events, to create and sustain a diverse membership to the MVP.

Chairs are independent of the LMNS and maternity providers.

Requires Skills/Experience

You will have recent experience of using maternity services in Birmingham or Solihull, ideally within the last 3 years.

In addition, you should have:

  • Experience of engaging with service users either through paid or voluntary work
  • The ability to network and build relationships with a range of people
  • A proactive and enthusiastic approach to engagement with the ability to listen to the views of a wide range of people and experiences
  • The ability to use social media to promote and engage with audiences

The Ask

The role of Chair is voluntary but attracts reimbursement of £150 per day worked in line with NHSE PPV rates. The maximum a Chair will be required to commit to is 4 days per month (though it is not necessary to be able to commit to this)
Ideally a Chair will remain in post for 12 months from appointment (though we appreciate this is subject to changes of circumstance etc within that time)
Chairs will contribute to reporting mechanisms through data gathering at meetings and events and support Gateway Family Services with information collection that can support the improvement of services and delivery (for example, patient or service user evaluations)

Benefits

Chairs will be supported by an MVP Coordinator who will ensure regular reimbursement of PPV payments and support with the organisation of meetings, monitoring incoming emails and enquiries, updating relevant information on the Gateway website and support with social media use.

Chairs will be supported through a package of induction and training covering essential areas such as  Safeguarding, GDPR and Data Protection as well as Boundaries and Confidentiality and Health and Safety.  Gateway will also support access to a range of external training, including e-learning provided by NHS England  and will include input from key LMNS personnel.

To Apply

Please take a look at the attached Role Description and accompanying Service Structure, and if you are interested in the role, please complete the Expression of Interest detailing how you feel you meet the skills and experience within the Service Specification. If you have any questions regarding the role or the remit of  the MVP, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Jo Harper in first instance at j.harper@gatewayfs.org

Completed Expressions of Interest should be sent to recruitment@gatewayfs.org by the end of the day on Sunday, 26th March.

MVP Chair Role Description