Service
Designing services around what people need — and what organisations can safely deliver.
Evidence-informed service review, redesign and implementation support for maternity and experience-led pathways.
Areas of particular expertise
- Postnatal birth conversation services
- Personalised birth planning after trauma or complex experience
- Perinatal family liaison and family involvement in learning responses
- Interfaces between maternity, perinatal mental health, trauma and bereavement services
- Partner and birth-companion preparation
- Accessible antenatal and postnatal information and support
- Complaints, early resolution and compassionate-response pathways
- Patient-experience governance and improvement processes
When this service is useful
- A valued service is overwhelmed, inconsistent or dependent on individual staff
- Waiting times or demand have risen and the pathway needs redesign
- National recommendations require a credible local response
- Several services overlap but women still experience gaps
- Leaders want to introduce birth conversations, birth planning or family liaison but need an operating model
- A programme was designed around professional assumptions without enough evidence from women and families
- A pilot needs a stronger specification, governance model or evaluation plan before expansion
How the work proceeds
- 1
Understand
Define the population, unmet need, risks, constraints and the decision to be made; review existing evidence and listen to the people who use and deliver the service.
- 2
Map
Make the current pathway visible: entry points, exclusions, waits, hand-offs, duplicated work, governance and interfaces with other services.
- 3
Design
Develop the future model: purpose, scope, referral criteria, roles, clinical boundaries, information flows, escalation, quality standards and outcomes.
- 4
Test
Challenge the model against realistic scenarios, equity, workforce capacity, safety risks and the experiences of women and staff.
- 5
Implement and evaluate
Build a proportionate plan, measures and learning cycle; support pilot delivery, review and adaptation.
Possible deliverables
- Needs and gap analysis
- Current- and future-state pathway maps
- Service model or specification
- Referral and triage framework
- Role profiles and competency framework
- Standard operating principles and governance recommendations
- Business-case evidence and benefits narrative
- Co-production plan and workshop facilitation
- Outcome and evaluation framework
- Implementation roadmap
- Staff training aligned to the pathway
A model built from practice
I designed, established and expanded an NHS Birth Conversation and Birth Planning Service — increasing capacity by more than 80% and reducing waiting times by six months while demand rose by 40%. More than 97% of women reported being listened to sensitively. I also developed the business case and model for senior perinatal family liaison roles within PSIRF and chaired cross-organisational review arrangements for women with complex psychological support needs.
This means I understand both the human purpose of these services and the operational detail needed to make them credible, governable and sustainable.