The Care Quality Commission checks whether hospitals, care homes and care services are meeting government standards. Visit our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Maternity services survey 2010

This survey collected information about the experiences of over 25,000 women who responded to the survey and had a live birth in England in February 2010.

The results have been used by NHS trusts to improve their performance and understand their patients’ experiences, and by CQC for regulatory, compliance and monitoring activities.

Participation and eligibility

Key finding

Almost three-quarters (74%) said they were ‘always’ involved in decisions about their care and 63% said they were ‘always’ treated with kindness and understanding in hospital after the birth.

Participants: 25,488 women
Response rate: 52%
NHS trusts: 144
Age range: 16 and over
Eligibility: all women who had a live birth in a hospital, birth centre, maternity unit or at home.

Key findings for England

Most of the participants were positive about the services they received and many reported good access to care and a sense of involvement in decisions about their care.

Most participants (83%) had a choice about where to have their baby.
Almost three-quarters (74%) said they were ‘always’ involved in decisions about their care and 63% said they were ‘always’ treated with kindness and understanding in hospital after the birth.
The majority (86%) were given support, encouragement and advice on how to feed their baby.

Areas of concern

The survey also highlighted areas where support for women could be improved, particularly during the postnatal period when the mother and baby start to settle into family life.

Eight per cent of participants said they didn’t receive the pain relief they wanted.
Almost one in five (18%) did not feel that they got enough information about their own recovery and 21% felt they were not given enough information about emotional changes they might experience following the birth.
Seventeen per cent said that infant feeding was not discussed with them during their pregnancy and 13% said they didn’t receive advice about feeding their baby in the six weeks that followed the birth.

Results for England

The briefing note contains more information about the national results and describes all findings for England as a whole .

Maternity services survey 2010: Briefing note

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The results tables include a comparison with findings from the 2007 survey and identifies all significant changes.

Maternity services survey 2010: Results tables

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Results for NHS Trusts

We have published the results for each trust in our care directory.

These results show how trusts performed on questions that could be scored in each area covered by the questionnaire. The technique used to analyse these results allows us to identify which trusts we can confidently say performed 'better', 'worse' or 'about the same'.

View the A-Z list of maternity survey results by NHS trust.

Benchmark reports

Each trust was also provided with a benchmark report on its scores in the survey, which enables them to benchmark their performance against all other trusts and identify areas for improvement.

Download the Individual benchmark reports for each trust from the NHS Surveys website.

Read our guide to understanding and interpreting the benchmark reports: