An established Maternity Voices Partnership (MVP) will have an annual or multi-year workplan as set out in national guidance:
“The MVP should have an annual workplan outlining its agreed local priorities, using tools like the 15 Steps for Maternity and Walk the Patch to develop a workplan based on local feedback from engagement with local women and families, prioritising hearing the voices of minority groups and those who may face health inequalities.”
“It will need to be agreed by the Maternity Voices Partnership and ratified by the Local Maternity System, commissioner(s) and/or provider(s) so that there is a shared understanding of what the Maternity Voices Partnership will deliver.”
Implementing Better Births: A Resource Pack for Local Maternity Systems
In order to comply with CNST Safety Action 7, Trusts are required to provide:
“The MVP’s work programme, minutes of the MVP meeting which agreed it and minutes of the LMS board that ratified it.”
An annual workplan template is available on the National Maternity Voices web site.
We’d like to link to some examples of annual workplans. Does your MVP have current examples that are working well in your locality? If you’d be happy for this to be shared here, please contribute via this form. Please say if you would prefer your resource to be anonymised. Thank you.
The MVP service user leadership team (e.g. Chair and Vice-chair) will facilitate the process of coproducing and then coordinating the delivery of the workplan. However, all members of the MVP will participate in this and successful delivery will depend on effective partnership working between all involved.
Priorities will be identified on an ongoing basis throughout the year and will take account of:
- Service user feedback
- Dashboards, themes from complaints, and other relevant data
- NHS priorities (provider, commissioner, Local Maternity System (LMS), regional and/or national)
It can be helpful to hold an Annual Development Day, perhaps with an external facilitator, to:
- review progress over the previous year
- agree priorities for the coming year
- determine membership of any sub-groups.
This gives the membership ownership of the workplan and provides a focus for the meetings ahead.
There will need to be a process for ensuring that the budget and the workplan are aligned so that the agreed outcomes are achievable.
The workplan of an established MVP is likely to include:
these activities:
- Gathering feedback
- Reviewing services
- Coproduction
- Representation
- Input to strategic decision-making
these areas of focus:
these geographical/organisational tiers:
More information is given on each of these in section 4.