Designing better beginnings - safer, fairer maternity care

Rebuilding trust with data and evidence to deliver safer, fairer maternity care

Across England, maternity services face intense scrutiny. The CQC’s national review (2022–2024) found 47% of services rated requires improvement for safety and 18% inadequate, with none outstanding for safety.

In June 2025, the Health and Social Care Secretary launched a rapid national investigationinto maternity and neonatal services to deliver truth and accountability for affected families and drive urgent improvements.

At the same time, disparities remain stark: the latest MBRRACE-UK data show an almost three-fold difference in maternal mortality for Black women versus White women, and almost two-fold for Asian women.

Few issues preoccupy Trust Boards more than the challenge of maternity services.

What we’ll cover (debate + practical takeaways):

• The real challenges behind maternity safety—and the unwarranted variation in care.
• How existing data can be turned into an early-warning system (signals, thresholds, actions).
• What commissioners and providers can do deliver better services by reimaging their ‘business models’
• How to address health disparities and deliver better value, sustainably.
• Introducing the Strasys Maternity Index (SMI): an objective, comparable view of maternity risk across NHS Trusts to prioritise action and track improvement over time.

Who should attend

• ICB chairs, chief executives and board members.
• NHS trust CxOs (medical, nursing, midwifery), directors of transformation and quality.
• Professionals involved in commissioning and delivering maternity services.
• Place-based public-health teams, local-authority partners, third-sector innovators.
• National policy, finance and workforce leads.

What you’ll leave with

• A clear picture of where and why risk concentrates in maternity pathways.
• A practical framework to build a trust-restoring improvement plan grounded in data.
• Early access to the SMI methodology and discussion structures to use with your Board.