Leading Together for Safer Maternity Care
National efforts to improve maternity leadership and culture have, to date, concentrated on the most senior tier of leadership. This programme is deliberately different: it works directly with the maternity leaders closest to care delivery. These people hold the ward and set the tone of the team on every shift. It reaches the part of the system that cascade models have previously struggled to touch.
11/11 NHS England LWC Framework items improved significantly
9/10 would highly recommend
NPS +63 (in healthcare contexts, scores above 50 are generally considered excellent)
50+ colleagues trained across 3 NHS Trusts
Maternity wards in real life
Maternity leadership is relentless. Labour Ward Co-ordinators and the wider team are expected to hold clinical judgement, staff wellbeing, and patient safety together, often in the same five minutes, with no space to step back and reset. Leading Together for Safer Maternity Care was built for that reality: a leadership and culture programme co-designed with doctors and midwives, using real scenarios and evidence-based tools that shift behaviour and culture to deliver safer care together
Programme structure and the six modules
- Full day or modular format across multiple sessions
- Suitable for single-profession groups or whole-MDT delivery
- In-person or digital delivery
- Up to 20 per cohort, single- or multi-Trust
- Participants from different Trusts can attend the same cohort to share good practice and build system-wide learning
01. Compassionate Leadership in Action
02. Psychological Safety in Transient Teams
03. Difficult Conversations with Courage & Care
04. MDT Communication & Escalation
05. Human Factors & Decision-Making
06. Learning Culture & Debrief
Who it's for: the whole MDT
Built for the whole maternity MDT, because Ockenden's Essential Action 3 is clear that staff who work together must train together:
• Directors of Midwifery
• Heads of Midwifery
• Labour Ward Co-ordinators
• Consultant Obstetricians & Gynaecologists
• Resident Doctors
• Anaesthetists
The evidence base
Two landmark national inquiries, Ockenden (2022) and the Amos Interim Investigation (2026), have identified the same root causes of preventable harm in maternity care: cultures of silence, fractured multidisciplinary relationships, and clinical leaders who may not have the tools, time, or support to lead within pressured environments. This programme is a proven, evidence-based response, delivered and independently evaluated across an ICB system.
- Ockenden Final Report (2022), particularly Essential Action 3 on multidisciplinary training
- The Amos Interim National Maternity Investigation (2026)
- The NHS England Labour Ward Co-ordinator Education and Development Framework (2023), all 11 elements
- The NHS Maternity Incentive Scheme, Safety Actions B (Training) and F (Culture and leadership)
Why Work With Us
Led by Carley Brown FCIPD and Nazia Fitzpatrick CPsychol, Organisational Psychologists with over 20 years of combined experience supporting NHS and public sector leaders.
Our maternity programmes combine expertise in NHS maternity systems with lived experience of avoidable patient harm, bringing both professional insight and deep understanding. We're not a training provider, we're a specialist consultancy that helps maternity teams create lasting behaviour change under pressure.
