New maternity suite opens in King's Lynn
It's based in North Lynn
New and expectant mothers in the King’s Lynn area will be receiving their care in a new Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) midwifery suite in the St Augustine’s Healthy Living Centre building, Colombia Way, North Lynn, which opened this week.
The Maple Suite will provide antenatal and post-natal care for women and families in the King’s Lynn locality, reducing the need to attend routine appointments in an acute hospital setting. A similar successful suite has already opened at the hospital’s North Cambridgeshire site.
The Maple Team, which consists of 13 midwives and two senior maternity support workers, will initially run three clinics, five days a week from the North Lynn based suite, with plans to expand their services in the future.
Karen Warrington, Project Manager from Norfolk and Waveney Local Maternity System, said:
"The suite will benefit pregnant women and their families greatly, as this community service offers more flexibility, is more accessible, and ?provides all the resources in one place.
"The Maple Suite is part of a long-term plan to transform maternity services and provide ‘continuity of carer’, where ?women and families are looked after by the same midwife throughout their pregnancy.
"For the future, our plans are to expand into the ground floor of the building, and 'provide further community maternity services including antenatal classes, smoking cessation support, screening services, Consultant clinics and perinatal mental health consultations."
Sarah Roberts, Maple Team Lead Midwife, said:
"The launch of the Maple Suite is a fantastic opportunity to be working together under one roof as we continue to prepare for continuity of care.
"We are familiar with the St Augustine?’s building as we have been using a clinic room here for ?many years, but the formation of the suite has meant we have expanded into three further clinic rooms upstairs.
"Eventually, we would love to be able to offer services such as hypnobirthing classes and a breast feeding drop-in as we continue to develop the suite."
Amanda Price-Davey, Head of Midwifery at QEH, said:
"This is a substantial step forwards towards the Trust’s ambition of delivering a new model of maternity care where women and families will have continuity of the midwife caring for them.
"The local maternity hubs are the first step to ensuring midwives are in the right place to deliver this care. This has taken a huge amount of collaborative working between different teams and organisations and I am so proud of the work that these teams have all put in to making this happen."