The Maternity and Women’s Health workshop was just one of many at the conference and was well attended by a range of health practitioners, who learned a great deal from the stories they heard from two sanctuary seekers – Afusat Saliu and Sara Abraham. The workshop was led by Rose McCarthy, Refugee Council, Trustee of City of Sanctuary and NCT teacher, Mel Cooper, Midwifery Lecturer at the University of Bradford and Anna Dawson Jones, NCT Postnatal leader, BBCS Project lead, West Yorkshire. Practitioners worked in groups to explore how they might go about seeking a maternity stream sanctuary award and took away a range of useful resources including the excellent NCT guide for midwives, health visitors and education and support practitioners “Facilitating antenatal courses attended by asylum seekers and refugees” and the research report by Maternity Action and the Refugee Council “When maternity doesn’t matter” about the Home Office policy of dispersing pregnant sanctuary seekers.
The whole conference report can be found here.