The Maternity Co-Design Project is focused on partnering with our community, staff and healthcare partners to capture their perspectives and experience, so together we can shape our maternity care for the future.

It is projected that births within our region will increase in the coming years. This growing demand is an important reason why the Mackay HHS has commenced planning for the future of our maternity care now with the delivery of the Maternity Co-Design Project.

The Maternity Co-Design Project is being delivered in a phased approach and aims to make our maternity care the best it can be for local women, expectant parents and their families, as well as ensuring the provision of a valued and sustainable maternity service into the future.

Co-Design means we listen to your voices and experiences, and work in partnership with you to design maternity care for the future which supports our staff, as well as the many women, babies, and their families who access our services.

During phase two consultation focused on collecting feedback about the following three key areas:

• What does good maternity care look like?
• How do we provide a calm safe environment for all labour and birth, regardless of the place of birth?
• What would good communication with women and their families look like?

These themes underpinned all of our engagement activities including our kitchen table discussions and yarning circles run by our Consultation Champions, our face-to-face focus group sessions, our online forums and our online surveys.

Once we have captured the feedback from our stakeholders, we will develop a draft maternity care plan for the future. We are looking forward to being able to share the outcomes of the consultation with our community, staff and healthcare partners in phase three of the Project.

Feedback and contributions received throughout the consultation phase of the project from our maternity consumers, community, staff and healthcare partners will be recorded and carefully reviewed by the Mackay HHS as we develop a draft plan for our future maternity care.

In phase three of our Maternity Co-Design Project, we will share the outcomes of what we heard during our consultation, and how this feedback has been considered in the development of our draft maternity care plan. Your feedback and any information provided will be collected in accordance with the National Privacy Principles (NPPs) set out in the Information Privacy Act 2009 (Qld) (IP Act).