Community Midwives

Working Hours

• Some community midwives work full-time (5 days a week).
• Others work part-time (2–4 days a week).
• Normal working hours are 9am to 5pm.
• When they are not working, their phones are off and they cannot access work systems.
• This also applies when they are on annual leave or off sick.

Contact

• The best way to contact your community midwife is by text or WhatsApp.
• They may not answer phone calls if they are in clinic or in a home visit.
• Only send non-urgent questions to your midwife.
• For urgent concerns, contact Triage instead.
• If your midwife is on annual leave, it may take up to 2 weeks to get a reply.
• When working, midwives aim to reply within 1–3 working days.
• You’ll also be given the team office number for non-urgent questions. Please use this number for non-urgent concerns if your midwife is on leave.
• The office phones are answered Monday–Friday, 9am–10am, and voicemails are checked daily.

• When you find out you’re pregnant, your GP will give you a link to a self-referral form.
• Fill in the form as soon as possible.
• The form is sent to the community midwife team at your GP surgery.
• The team will contact you within three weeks of receiving the referral.
• They’ll arrange your first booking appointment.
• They’ll message you with the appointment details or call you using the phone number you put on the form (the call will come from a mobile number).
• They can’t speak to your family about your appointment until they’ve spoken to you first.
• This appointment will decide which team is best suited to care for you throughout your pregnancy.

• Each community midwife looks after a caseload of pregnant women from 1-2 GP surgeries.
• Your antenatal appointments will be at either your GP surgery or a community hub (like a Children’s Centre).
• These appointments happen on set days and cannot be changed.
• If you need to cancel your appointment, please do this through the community midwives and not through the GP surgery as this can lead to missed care.
• It’s very important to attend so that your health and your baby’s health can be regularly checked.
• At each appointment, you will:
  • Have your blood pressure checked
  • Provide a urine sample
  • Go through other checks and share information

• Community midwives cannot prescribe medication.
• If you need medicine, it must come from your GP or the hospital medical team.
• Community midwives cannot provide letters for housing applications or problems.
• Community midwives cannot provide letters for Visa application forms.
• Community midwives cannot provide fit-to-fly letters – you need to get these from your GP.
• They can give you:
  • A prescription exemption form
  • A Mat B1 form after 20 weeks of pregnancy

• Each community midwife usually covers 1–4 clinics each week.
• When not in clinic, they do postnatal home visits.
• After you have your baby and go home from hospital, a midwife will visit you the next day.
• Tell the midwives on the postnatal ward if you’ll be going home to a different address.
• Home visits happen between 10am and 4pm – no set time slots are given.
• You will have at least 3 postnatal checks after discharge.
  • Some will be at home.
  • Some will be in a postnatal clinic, where you’ll get a set date and time.
• Home visits happen 7 days a week, including weekends and bank holidays.
• If you go home on a Friday, Saturday, or the day before a bank holiday, a midwife will still visit you the next day.

Urgent Concerns

If you have any urgent concerns, please contact your GP if you are under 17 weeks pregnant, or triage if you are over 17 weeks pregnant. Please do not contact your community midwife.

Find out who is best to contact if you have worries during pregnancy or after birth.