When You Know…Childbirth in the asylum system

Co-created with experts by experience, the powerful film, ‘When You Know…Childbirth in the asylum system’, explores themes of fear, access and isolation.  Developed as part of the Best for Baby Too Improvement Collaborative in Liverpool, this moving film highlights stark, personal testimonies of five women with lived experience of navigating maternity care while living under asylum restrictions.

Together, they address an array of obstacles they faced due to the lack of financial resources for affordable, healthy diets, language barriers and wider heath inequalities. Solutions, some simple, are also proposed by the women enabling and empowering those watching their journeys to reflect on a range of broad, practical actions to help influence, tackle and inspire change for mothers and babies in the asylum system. The film is aimed at raising awareness of the hidden challenges faced by this group of pregnant women, birthing people and babies who are disproportionately represented in maternal and neonatal deaths.  It will be used to train midwives, GPs, maternal and healthcare professionals nationally.

This project is being supported by the NHS Race and Health Observatory.