East Lancashire Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership (East Lancs MNVP) advocates for pregnant women, people and families and works alongside the providers and commissioners of services in East Lancashire (Ribble Valley, Hyndburn, Pendle, Burnley and Rossendale) and Blackburn with Darwen to support co-produced maternity and neonatal care. Importantly, we work to reduce health inequalities, including those which affect people from a Black, Black British, Asian, Asian British or other minoritised ethnicity background, those for whom written or spoken English is difficult to understand and those in social, economic or digital exclusion.
You are welcome to get involved!
The MNVP includes service users (that’s women and people who are pregnant or have given birth, their families and supporters), service providers (such as midwives, obstetricians, NICU teams, infant feeding teams and health visitors), Integrated Care Board (who decide what services are needed by local people and provide governance and oversight), local parenting charities and community interest companies, and GPs. The MNVP is led by a service user and actively seeks the involvement of other service users through different means, such as meetings, email, Facebook groups and feedback from groups in the community. We are also networked with other MNVPs in the Lancashire and South Cumbria area, across the North West region, and nationally.
The MNVP works together to find ways to improve services, both by providing feedback and ‘co-producing’ services. Co-production means working as a team to develop ideas and solutions, so service users have an equal voice, it’s not just the providers deciding what and how to do things. The work happens at both local and Lancashire and South Cumbria system level. We also work with the providers to help improve communication about the services so that the information provided is accessible and useful.
If you would like to get involved, please get in touch with us:
Email: eastlancsmnvp@healthwatchlancashire.co.uk
Facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/EastLancsMNVP
Below are the Terms of Reference for the Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership (about to be updated for the explicit inclusion of neonatal), detailing how it works, who is involved and what the purpose of the group is: