A Bradford consultant midwife and her team have won one of the UK’s top midwifery prizes for a home birth education service promoting normal birth.

Consultant midwife Alison Brown and Deborah Hughes, a community midwife, both of Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, attended the prestigious Royal College of Midwives (RCM) annual awards in London to hear they had scooped the award for Promoting Normal Birth, sponsored by Bounty Parenting Club.

The award was given for Bradford Homebirth Workshops which delivered sessions about homebirth to boost the city’s low homebirth rate of 0.5 per cent. Nationally the rate is three per cent.

As a result of the project, by September 2010 the homebirth rate had risen to two per cent.

A collaborative effort, the workshops involved midwives and parents who chose homebirth and were held in community settings and promoted normal and natural childbirth.

Alison Brown said: “Winning the Bounty Award for Promoting Normal Birth is a great honour for our service. In Bradford, we like to think of new and innovative ways to engage with women and their partners and these workshops have proved a real hit.”