Who We Are
GMAG (Gloucestershire Maternity Action Group) is a grassroots movement and community interest corporation (CIC) advocating for women, babies, families, and midwives across Gloucestershire. We exist to ensure maternity services are safe, evidence-based, transparent, lawful, and centred around the needs of women and local communities.
We believe women deserve genuine choice in birth, continuity of carer, individualised support, and access to safe maternity services close to home. We are committed to protecting and promoting local, midwife-led care alongside safe hospital services when needed.
Our mission is to amplify women’s voices and hold decision-makers accountable for the maternity services provided in Gloucestershire.
Our work includes analysing policy and data, submitting Freedom of Information requests, engaging with NHS leaders and elected representatives, raising public awareness, and organising lawful community action where needed.
What We Stand For
Continuity of carer, close to home.
Maternity care including pregnancy, birth and post-natal should be provided as locally as possible, by known midwives and consistent community teams
Respect for women and physiology.
Care should recognise birth as a normal physiological process, not a medical emergency, for most women, while also being able to respond promptly and safely when clinical needs arise.
Equity and fairness.
All women should have equal access to safe, high-quality maternity care, regardless of postcode, background, language, income, disability, or ethnicity.
Genuine choice in place of birth.
All women should have genuine choice in place of birth including home birth, stand alone midwife unit, alongside midwife unit and Gloucester hospital and this choice should be reliable and not a gamble as to whether it will be available when labour begins.
Individualised, compassionate care.
Women should be treated with dignity, listened to, and choices respected, with maternity services built around relationships rather than systems alone.
Evidence-based practice.
Local maternity services should be shaped by the best available evidence and research and responses to local women’s lived experience, not by unsupported cultural assumptions.
Accountability and transparency.
Any changes to maternity services should be open, lawful, and properly explained to the public, with genuine involvement of women, families, staff, and community voices.
Support for Midwives.
Midwives should be respected, properly staffed, and enabled to practise safely and professionally, so they can deliver continuity, autonomy, and high-quality care.
Why This Matters
Across Gloucestershire, women are increasingly facing uncertainty about what maternity care and birth options will actually be available to them when they need them.
Choices that families are legally entitled to — including home birth and community midwife-led units — are becoming less reliable or harder to access. As a result, many women feel pushed into birth settings that do not feel right or safe for them, while others are left making decisions under pressure that they would not otherwise choose.
At the same time, systems that foster trusted relationships between women and midwives are being replaced by more fragmented services and reduced local provision, including significant and potentially dangerous changes to community postnatal care.
The prevailing narrative is often that “more hospital birth = safer birth.” However, this view does not fully reflect whether mothers and babies are being set up for a healthy, positive, and empowered start together, or the lasting physical and emotional impact of their birth experiences. The UK Government’s 2023 research on UK-wide birth trauma found that…
79% of women experienced birth trauma
53% experienced physical trauma
71% experienced psychological or emotional trauma
72% said their trauma lasted over a year or was still ongoing
More than half (53%) said they are less likely to have more children because of their experience
These figures raise an important question: is this standard of care good enough? We believe it isn’t.
A system that leaves people traumatised cannot be considered “safe”. We ask simply — is this what you would want for your own family?
Evidence is clear that better is possible. Continuity of care — where women are known and supported by a consistent professional — is already recognised by NHS England as best practice and linked to better outcomes and safer, more positive experiences.
The question isn’t whether a better model exists — it does. The real issue is why it isn’t being delivered locally, and why services are moving further away from it.
Recent and proposed changes to maternity care in Gloucestershire are happening in the context of a £1.2 million underspend in the maternity staffing budget and ongoing failure to appoint senior midwifery leaders with the expertise and authority to advocate for midwifery care and physiological birth when key decisions are made.
GMAG’s position is clear:
Women and families in Gloucestershire deserve better: safe, individualised, lawful, evidence-based maternity care, and transparency in how services are planned and delivered.