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Pregnancy and complex social factors
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Introduction
This pathway covers service provision for pregnant women with complex social factors.
The NICE Pathway on antenatal care outlines the care that women should be offered during pregnancy. However, pregnant women with complex social factors may have additional needs. This pathway sets out what healthcare professionals as individuals, and antenatal services as a whole, can do to address these needs and improve pregnancy outcomes in this group of women. This pathway has been developed in collaboration with the Social Care Institute for Excellence and will also be of relevance to professionals working in social services and education/childcare.
The pathway applies to all pregnant women with complex social factors and contains a number of recommendations on standards of care for this population as a whole. However, four groups of pregnant women were identified as exemplars:
- women who misuse substances (alcohol and/or drugs)
- women who are recent migrants, asylum seekers or refugees, or who have difficulty reading or speaking English
- young women aged under 20 years
- women who experience domestic abuse.
Because there are differences in the barriers to care and particular needs of these four groups, specific recommendations have been made for each group. Specific issues addressed in the pathway include:
- the most appropriate healthcare setting for antenatal care provision
- practice models for overcoming barriers and facilitating access, including access to interpreting services and all necessary care
- ways of communicating information to women so that they can make appropriate choices
- optimisation of resources.
Source guidance
The NICE guidance that was used to create the pathway.
Pregnancy and complex social factors. NICE clinical guideline 110 (2010)
Quality standards
Quality statements
Effective interventions library
Successful effective interventions library details
Implementation
Commissioning
These resources include support for commissioners to plan for costs and savings of guidance implementation and meeting quality standards where they apply.
These resources will help to inform discussions with providers about the development of services and may include measurement and action planning tools.
Education and learning
NICE produces resources for individual practitioners, teams and those with a role in education to help improve and assess users' knowledge of relevant NICE guidance and its application in practice.
Service improvement and audit
These resources provide help with planning ahead for NICE guidance, understanding where you are now, and conducting improvement initiatives.
Pathway information
Information for the public
NICE produces information for the public that summarises, in plain English, the recommendations that NICE makes to healthcare and other professionals.
NICE has written information for the public explaining its guidance on:
Patient-centred care
Patients and healthcare professionals have rights and responsibilities as set out in the NHS Constitution for England – all NICE guidance is written to reflect these. Treatment and care should take into account individual needs and preferences. People should have the opportunity to make informed decisions about their care and treatment, in partnership with their healthcare professionals. If someone does not have the capacity to make decisions, healthcare professionals should follow the Department of Health's advice on consent, the code of practice that accompanies the Mental Capacity Act and the supplementary code of practice on deprivation of liberty safeguards. In Wales, healthcare professionals should follow advice on consent from the Welsh Government.
If the person is under 16, healthcare professionals should follow the guidelines in Seeking consent: working with children. If a young person is moving between paediatric and adult services their care should be planned and managed according to the best practice guidance described in the Department of Health's Transition: getting it right for young people.
Updates to this pathway
22 February 2013 Minor maintenance updates
Supporting information
Glossary
An incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between adults who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality. It can also include forced marriage, female genital mutilation and 'honour violence'.
Women who moved to the UK within the previous 12 months.
Morbidity that has a lasting impact on either the woman or the child.
Regular use of recreational drugs, misuse of over-the-counter medications, misuse of prescription medications, misuse of alcohol or misuse of volatile substances (such as solvents or inhalants) to an extent where physical dependence or harm is a risk (to the woman and/or her unborn baby).
Antenatal care pathway
View the 'Antenatal care overview' pathWhat discourages some pregnant women with complex social factors from using antenatal care services
How can these problems be addressed?
Improve service organisation
View the 'Improve service organisation for pregnant women with complex social factors' pathProvide training for healthcare staff
View the 'Provide training for healthcare staff who work with pregnant women with complex social factors' pathEnhance care delivery
View the 'Enhance care delivery for pregnant women with complex social factors' pathPaths in this pathway
- Improve service organisation for pregnant women with complex social factors
- Provide training for healthcare staff who work with pregnant women with complex social factors
- Enhance care delivery for pregnant women with complex social factors
Pathway created: March 2012 Last updated: February 2013
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