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 double over the next six years. This growing demand is an important reason why the Mackay HHS has commenced planning for the future of our maternity care now. The key aim of the Maternity Co-Design Project is 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.

As we begin engaging with our community, staff and healthcare partners on the future of our maternity care, there are three key areas which we want your ideas and contributions to focus on:

• In your experience, what does good maternity care look like?
• In your experience, how do we provide a calm safe environment for all labour and birth, regardless of the place of birth?
• In your experience, what would good communication with women and their families look and feel like?

These themes underpin 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 webinars 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.

Your feedback will play a key role in helping us shape maternity care moving forward. Feedback and contributions received from you and our other stakeholders including community, staff and healthcare partners will be recorded and then 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).