Mums-to-be across Herefordshire and Worcestershire are set to benefit from additional, specialist information, advice, and support to maintain or improve their pelvic health following a successful bid for more than £300,000.

Herefordshire and Worcestershire Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS) have secured £337,000 from NHS England and Improvement to become an early implementer system, driving forward the NHS Long Term Plan commitment to ensure that women have access to multidisciplinary pelvic health clinics and pathways by 2023/24.

This money will be spent on improving the quality of care in the antenatal period before and during pregnancy by providing additional specialist staff, extra training, and providing mums-to-be with more resources – including a new app to support pelvic floor muscle training - a self-assessment tool to use throughout the pregnancy journey - to enable them to take active steps to maintain or improve their pelvic floor function.

Hazel Brookes, Quality Improvement Midwife at Herefordshire and Worcestershire LMNS, said: “This is fantastic news for our local service users and we are delighted that we are one of just ten systems across the country to receive this specialist funding.

"The money, spread over three years, will enable us to expand the range of support that is available for mums-to-be to manage their pelvic health - including a specialist midwife and more physiotherapy assistants. We hope to develop our perinatal pelvic pathways in partnership with service users, with an ambition to create a single point of access to a multi-disciplinary perinatal pelvic health clinic.”

Fay Baillie, LMNS Project Director, said: “It’s widely reported that pelvic floor dysfunction is significantly underreported due to embarrassment, shame or the belief that it is normal following birth.

"We want to give our service users the confidence to seek treatment if they feel something is not quite right. The funding will ensure we can lead local delivery of our ambition to improve the prevention, identification, and treatment of ‘mild to moderate’ pelvic floor dysfunction following birth, and ultimately reduce the number of women living with pelvic floor dysfunction postnatally and in later life.”