Open letter to the Board of Trustees Leeds NHS Trust,

We, the undersigned, are a group of concerned patients, parents, service users, peer supporters, and birth professionals.

We are writing to highlight the worrying trends revealed by the most recent home birth statistics.

Service suspension has always ranked highly amongst the fears raised by attendees at the Leeds Homebirth Support Group, but historically we were able to allay people’s fears and state that statistically such events were rare. This is clearly no longer the case, with the number of birth plans changed due to suspension of service regularly overtaking the number of births achieved at home in the last two years.

A change in plan at such a late stage, and at such a pivotal moment in a family’s life is unduly stressful and can lead to a variety of adverse outcomes.

Given that for uncomplicated pregnancies home birth is widely recognised as being as safe or safer than hospital birth for both mothers and infants can you please explain why this service is withheld at times of service acuity, forcing women and babies into an environment that is associated with higher rates of intervention and no improvement in safety outcomes.

In solidarity with the midwives who are clearly doing their very best under incredibly difficult operational pressures, we urge you to immediately restore the staffing of this service to adequate levels to ensure that we no longer have to see more families turned away in labour than achieve a birth at home.