You will want to start building your capacity to identify priority issues for your Maternity Voices Partnership (MVP) to address. MVPs look at a range of data sources in order to build a picture of what’s working well and where there could be scope for improving local services. It will take time to identify and access the various data sources that your MVP will use. Some places to start could include:
- gathering feedback from your community. You could start with creating an online feedback form. Many MVPs gather feedback in this way on an ongoing basis.
- Holding a 15 Steps for Maternity exercise. 15 Steps for Maternity is a toolkit designed especially for use by MVPs which uses an observational approach to understanding what service users experience as they access local maternity care.
- Arranging for your provider’s maternity dashboard to be made available at MVP meetings.
We’d like to link to some examples of MVP online feedback forms here. Does your MVP have an example that is working well in your locality? If you’d be happy for this to be shared in the final version of the toolkit, please send it to hannah@nationalmaternityvoices.org.uk. Please say if you would prefer your resource to be anonymised. Thank you
This section should include the idea for an annual development day to celebrate achievements and discuss/vote on priorities, put names to sub-groups etc otherwise there is a danger that meetings become reactive or chat sessions without any structure
(Organisation/Role of this commenter: Consultant Midwife in Public Health)
I agree having an action log can also help people see what has been achieved or is in progress from previous meetings
(Organisation/Role of this commenter: Obstetrician KHFT)
I’ve now added “Reviewing the action log (i.e. any actions agreed at previous meetings)” to the list of standing agenda items in section 3.10 (Maternity Voices Partnership (MVP) meetings).
I’ve now added the idea of the annual development day to section 4.3 (Annual workplan). Agreeing priorities is also mentioned in section 3.1 (holding your first meeting).