Maternity services

Professional Midwifery Advocates

Delivering excellent midwifery care for women and their families

Professional Midwifery Advocates

Professional Midwifery Advocates (PMAs) are experienced practising midwives specially trained to help mums receive the best national standards of care, via tailored support for midwives that builds their professional resilience.

PMA’s support and guide midwives so they can deliver consistent, high quality, safe maternity care.

At Croydon Health Services NHS Trust we have one full time PMA and nine sessional PMAs using their skills to benefit staff and patients, each PMA seeing midwives on a 1-2-1 basis or within a group setting throughout the year.

How can Professional Midwifery Advocates help mums and families?

Work with the Croydon Maternity Voices Partnership to ensure women's experiences of maternity services are listened to and make service improvements where needed.

Support midwives to discuss the most appropriate choices for mum and baby.

Listen to any concerns mums may have about maternity care and take action if it is felt to be appropriate.
Sign post mums to other services if this is something that would be useful.
Work with practice development midwives to facilitate training and workshops for midwives to keep their knowledge and skills up to date.
Stay in contact with midwives for professional advice and guidance or to reflect on their practice or experiences.

What do Professional Midwifery Advocates do?

Ensure women and babies receive good quality, safe care.
Act as effective advocates for women and their families throughout pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period.
Support women and their midwives to plan safe personalised care for pregnancy and birth, for example when women would prefer to have your baby at home, in a birthing centre or in hospital but are being recommended something different.
Integrate learning and understanding of the restorative approach into their direct work with women.

A New Model of Midwifery Supervision

The new model came into effect in April 2017 and is based on the A-EQUIP model led by a team of Professional Midwifery Advocates.

The A-EQUIP (Advocating for Education and Quality ImProvement) model works for women in three ways:

Supporting midwives to advocate confidently for women
Where necessary provide direct support for women within a restorative approach
Undertaking quality improvement in collaboration with women

How do I contact a Professional Midwifery Advocate?

We are happy to hear from you by phone or email; our working hours are between Monday to Friday, 08:00 – 16:00hrs.

Email: ch-tr.pma@nhs.net

Telephone : 0208401 3000 ext. 5228 (with answerphone)

If you would like to have your baby at CHS , please complete the ‘antenatal self-referral’ via CHS webpage www.croydonhealthservices.nhs.uk/maternity-services

Maternity services

Search the Croydon Health Services NHS Trust website

Our maternity services

*Some pages on our Maternity services website are currently being updated. Thank you for your patience while we continue to make improvements and update our information.

Contact the team

Departments and wards

Advice, support and raising concerns

Professional Midwifery Advocates

Professional Midwifery Advocates

How can Professional Midwifery Advocates help mums and families?

What do Professional Midwifery Advocates do?

A New Model of Midwifery Supervision

How do I contact a Professional Midwifery Advocate?

Educational videos

Maternity services

Search the Croydon Health Services NHS Trust website

Main number

Tel: 020 8401 3000

*Some pages on our Maternity services website are currently being updated. Thank you for your patience while we continue to make improvements and update our information.

Departments and wards

Advice, support and raising concerns

Professional Midwifery Advocates

How can Professional Midwifery Advocates help mums and families?

What do Professional Midwifery Advocates do?

A New Model of Midwifery Supervision

How do I contact a Professional Midwifery Advocate?