Staffing challenges force closure of midwifery unit in Sussex until next year

The Eastbourne Midwifery Unit will be closed for labour care and births until the end of January 2024. Credit: ITV Meridian

The Eastbourne Midwifery Unit has been forced to suspend services for labour care and births until next year due to staffing issues.

East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust announced this week that it was closed "with immediate effect" until Friday 22 December due to "staffing challenges" but has extended this until the end of January 2024.

In a statement it said: “Due to staffing challenges facing our maternity services in Eastbourne, we have redeployed staff from the Eastbourne Midwifery Unit into our community midwifery team to ensure that we are able to continue to provide safe, high quality home births and maternity care within the community."

It added: "After reviewing the staffing needs for the coming weeks across all our maternity services and to provide certainty for families, we have made the decision to continue to suspend births at the Eastbourne Midwifery Unit until the end of January 2024, this will impact around four births a week.

"The unit will remain open for outpatient antenatal and postnatal services."

The Trust has apologised for any inconvenience, adding "this decision has been made to ensure that we can maintain safe services over the coming weeks".

The maternity team are in touch with anybody who has been affected and says patients will be fully supported with "safe and effective maternity care".

The Trust said: "We are continuing to work hard on both short term and long term solutions to our midwifery staffing issues.

"While we are actively attempting to recruit more midwives into our maternity services at Eastbourne and across East Sussex, the national shortage of trained midwives continues to make this a significant challenge."

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