On the 20th of January 2017, the Scottish Government released the new five year strategy for Scotland, The Best Start: A Five Year Forward Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Care which sets out a vision for the future planning, design and safe delivery of high quality maternity and neonatal services in Scotland. It puts the family at the centre of decisions so that all women, babies and their families get the highest quality care according to their needs.
On this page, you will find updates related to some of the Best Start workstreams in Lothian.
Community Hubs
Work is underway to pilot community hubs to bring routine maternity care closer to home. The Best Start Project Board is working with midwives in Lothian to pilot the model.
Maternity Care Survey
In May 2023, Maternity Services launched the Maternity Care Survey which is sent to all mothers in Lothian after their day 10 appointment. This gives mothers the chance to report back to us about their experience of maternity care and continuity of carer across all of the teams in Lothian. The survey is available in translation.
Neonatal
In August 2023, the Scottish Government announced that Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen will be the three centres in Scotland caring for the babies with the highest care needs. This will involve transfer and repatriation of babies within our regional Health Boards and will be planned on a regional level.
Our Keeping Mothers and Babies Together teams have rolled out seven day care in the community by our Neonatal Community Outreach Team (NCOT). This includes provision of phototherapy and nasogastric feeding in the home, where clinically safe according to criteria-led-discharge. This initiative has been rolled out to babies born at Simpson’s Centre for Reproductive Health and St John’s Hospital.
