Muslim Village Project

The Pitch

Problem statement

Studies show a lower number of South-Asian women engage with maternity services and that depression is higher among Pakistani women in the UK. The MBRRACE report shows Asian women are twice as likely to die during childbirth, and the ONS (2018) have found ‘Infant mortality rate was highest among babies with a Pakistani ethnicity’. The Invisible Report by Muslim Women's Network found breastfeeding and perinatal mental health support was substandard. That being said, Nottingham City is an extremely diverse community with a high Muslim population. With the huge stigma in the Muslim community around postnatal care, depression, and breastfeeding; families don’t access mainstream services.

Solution

One of our focus groups showed a lack of access to NHS maternity care is due to: - Groups not being culturally sensitive/safe - Lack of awareness and/or funds to get private support - Language barriers - Lack of confidence to seek support The solution is to offer Muslim women culturally safe and accessible postnatal support, where they can discuss breastfeeding, mental health and their birth experiences with trained Muslim volunteers. These will be weekly and online and will help reduce postnatal depression and increase breastfeeding rates. It will also encourage engagement with NHS maternity care in future pregnancies.

Why are we best placed to deliver?

Our project has a unique aim to support specifically Muslim families during the perinatal period. We have strong links with Nottingham University Hospitals and local organisations, including, Maternity Voices Partnership, Nottingham Women's Centre and Nottingham Muslim Women's Network. Our leaders are currently embedded in Nottingham maternity services, including Ockenden’s Independent Review. One of our founders is NUH’s Maternity & Neonatal Senior Advocate and a counsellor for a local infant loss charity. We also train other organisations to Support Muslim Families. Finally, we already successfully run a weekly postnatal group for the Polish community for over 3 years now.

Focus Areas

Delivery plan

Budget breakdown

Beneficiaries

75 people

Who will benefit

Expected impact

We will engage a community that is currently very disengaged with NHS maternity & perinatal care, but has a higher risk of infant loss and postnatal depression. We aim to increase knowledge of perinatal mental health, bereavement counselling and the benefits of breastfeeding. We’ll directly connect with disengaged families to help improve engagement with NHS and other mainstream support. NUH have struggled to engage the Muslim community for years, this will be the opportunity to improve things by offering culturally safe support by trained Muslim volunteers and bridge the gap with current perinatal care. The direct benefits will be to reduce isolation and postnatal depression and increase engagement with, infant loss counselling, NUH mental health services and breastfeeding rates. This will start our long-term goal to reduce poor maternity outcomes for Muslim families.

Track record

Last year, we offered our online antenatal programme to ethnically diverse families in Nottingham City for free. A study by Henderson et al. (2013), found only 15% of ethnic minority mothers took part in antenatal education - we managed to reach 37%. This was the first time for 75% of those who enrolled to access antenatal education and nearly half of those had been pregnant before. This is a quote from a Muslim mother who received our antenatal support: "This is my first experience with an antenatal course as I am expecting my first child, the course is very informative and very beneficial, so far I have really enjoyed all the content and the course layout is very clear, structured and well organised. I’m looking forward to gaining more knowledge and feeling much more confident for labour and afterbirth!" We have already successfully started, and grown a similar group for Polish-speaking families over 3 years, who face similar barriers.