What does the 2-year exemption mean?

What does it mean for privately practising midwives?

What does it mean for women who want to plan homebirth with a private midwife, as distinct from those who plan homebirth under a publicly funded scheme?

The general response by midwives to the announcement of the temporary reprieve is guarded. As I wrote last Friday, we have no reason to trust those who are advising the government, or the government itself. The woeful lack of consultation with midwives in this whole sorry saga, making us pawns that can easily be sacrificed by health ministers in their point-scoring and dodging of responsibility, has forced us to defend ourselves in a way that most midwives have never imagined we would need to do. We are not just talking about our livelihoods; which are in and of themselves legitimate and worth protecting. We are also talking about the safety and wellbeing of a group of mothers and babies whom midwives have served consistently since the beginning of human existence.

Midwives are waiting to see what hoops we will be required to jump through in order to "access the exemption".

One argument private midwives in Victoria have used in our submissions to government authorities and inquiries is the homebirth data that the Victorian government's Perinatal Data Collection Unit collects and analyses each year. It seems that no amount of evidence to the contrary can convince those at the helm of the ship of state that private midwifery practice, even with all the unreasonable restrictions that we face, is safe.

I have made an application to the Perinatal Data Collection Unit to make a Performance Indicator analysis of de-identified data for the past five years, from both homebirths and those who planned homebirth and transferred to hospital. [Here's a link to the 07-08 Performance Indicators You won't find 'Homebirth' in the publications, as our data is included in the Private Hospital aggregate data, because we provide private maternity services. There's a conundrum to consider!]