Shaping You and Your Baby

The National Maternity Surveys, You & Your Baby, gather important information about women's health and experiences of maternity care in England, by asking mothers directly, around six months after they had their baby. We have been carrying out these surveys since 1995. Since 2006, they've been launched every four years or so.

The design of our surveys has always been informed by the views and experiences of women who have recently given birth, and also with input from charities supporting families. The latest survey was launched in November 2024. Before we launched the 2024 survey, we asked:

• What would be your reaction to receiving the survey invitation?
• Would you have any questions that are not covered in the invitation letter or information sheet?
• How can we make the survey accessible to all women?
• Are the questions we're asking the right ones?
• Are we asking them in the right way?
• Would you find any of the questions difficult to answer and why?

As a result of feedback from parents, including women from different ethnic backgrounds, and with different experiences of motherhood including disability and being a single mum, we:

• Removed survey questions that were not a priority for parents. For instance, we removed a question 'Compared to other babies, how would you describe your baby?', because women felt it was unclear, difficult to answer, and not particularly helpful.
• Altered our language to make it more sensitive to women who may be living with a disability. For instance, we changed the wording of one of our questions from “Do any of your health conditions or disabilities reduce your ability to carry out day-to-day activities?” to “Do any of your health conditions or disabilities make it harder to carry out day-to-day activities?”
• Made information about the study clearer and more engaging.
• Made sure women of different ethnicities were represented when promoting the survey. For instance, we created different versions of our advertising material with photographs representing women from different ethnic groups.
• Reached out to women using social media and through organisations supporting families to increase awareness of the opportunity to take part.
• Added a page to our website to highlight the impact of previous surveys so anyone taking part might know their input can lead to meaningful change to policy and services.

The way we design and deliver each new survey is built on what we've learnt from our work on previous surveys. Over the years, we have used graphics rather than photographs in our branding, and introduced simple visual summaries of our key findings, rather than just publishing long written reports. The visual summaries are developed with advice from our parent, patient and public involvement and engagement contributors (PPPIE).

Thank you to everyone who has helped us shape this work.