The Maternity Stream is delighted to have awarded the Haamla Service the first “Maternity Service of Sanctuary Award”.The Haamla Service has evolved and expanded, since it’s beginning in 1994, to meet the ever-changing needs and makeup of vulnerable BME groups in Leeds, including asylum seekers, refugees, destitute women, travellers, trafficked women and women who have experienced Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The team is made up of a Haamla coordinator, two Specialist BME Midwives, three Community Midwives, three bi-lingual Maternity Support Workers (MSW’S) and 26 Volunteer Doulas.

The Haamla team have been key supporters of the Maternity Stream for the past 5years or more and founding members of the Maternity Stream have been supported directly through their own pregnancies  by the team to much praise and with the hope that more services like Haamla will become available to more women across the country. 

The award was handed over at the Leeds”Striving for Excellence in maternity Care in Leeds; a focus on asylum-seeking and refugee women” on June 1st 2015. The Maternity Stream conference hosted a hundred health professionals, community organisations and volunteers and so was a fitting context for the Haamla team to receive the award, in their home city, whilst demonstrating their commitment to sharing their good practice with others. At the conference, Sarah Bennett presented the Haamla team’s current work, detailing their work with asylum-seeking and refugee women and how they strive to meet their needs including their FGM clinic which is nationally recognised as an example of good practice. 

The Service of Sanctuary Award is a means to support and services and organisations who works directly with pregnant and post-natal asylum-seeking and refugee women to better understand their needs and so be able to offer improved care. The award necessitates organisations to go through a 3 stage learning journey; learning, embedding and sharing. Service of Sanctuary Award

More information about the Haamla Service including contact details can be found here.

For all the presentations from the conference on 1st June please follow this link.