Count Yourself Lucky
South East London

Commissioned by South East London ICS local maternity and neonatal services, Creating Ground used creative research methods to better understand the barriers facing access to maternity services for migrant women. 

This included identifying some key challenges including: lack of consistency in care; lack of care/empathy for individual circumstances; fear of payments and fear of being reported to Home Office; fear of disclosing mental health difficulties; lack of information about how UK systems work and their rights; racism and labelling; lack of post-natal support.

The collaborative process used creative and participatory approaches throughout to enable the women to share their experiences in a trusted, supported environment, and in a way that they felt comfortable with. Overall the project gave the women a sense of validation in sharing stories and it enabled health care services and migrant communities to come up with solutions together and build trust.

Creating Ground produced a report and co-created a performance 'Count Yourself Lucky' which was performed at South East London ICS's local maternity and neonatal services engagement event. They reported that after the event the women felt more understood and healthcare professionals were more aware of the issues. For example, a midwife said that she had changed how she dealt with a patient who was going through something similar as she felt able to approach the patient with more understanding.

We are in the process of developing the performance as a training tool to be used more widely within the NHS