Maternity Care for Asylum Seekers and Refugees

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Judith Nabb. “Pregnant asylum-seekers: perceptions of maternity service provision”

The article “Pregnant asylum-seekers: perceptions of maternity service provision” written by Judith Nabb in 2006 and based on the results of her research on medical care assistance given to pregnant refugees in the UK opens up a huge piece of information on the topic and represents the issue in a highly positive way. The author as an independent researcher shows particular interest in the topic of attitudes and possible complications that emerge in the process of provision of maternity care to refugees.

In the process of the study, Judith Nabb focuses on a set of particular issues representing interest to her personally and being relevant in the course of general medical care studies, such as the level of medical care assistance to refugees available in the UK at the present moment, the needs of refugees that distinguish them from regular pregnant UK citizens and the empirical research on the issues of personal experience and impressions about the asylum-seekers maternity care provision that both the patients and the staff providing the medical care in the UK has.

At the very beginning as well as throughout the whole work the author states that one of the main problems pregnant asylum-seekers face is lack of efficient communication and language barriers they have; together with this comes racial segregation and hostility they have to stand while being in the maternity houses. This is one of the primary assumptions Nabb puts forward in the course of her research, basing her judgment on the preliminary literary review she has conducted.

As a result of the preliminary theoretical research, Judith Nabb stipulates three main objectives for her research: she wants to “determine the expressed needs of pregnant asylum-seekers regarding maternity care”, to provide for the objectivity of the research and assure the multi-faceted results she aims to “ask women for accounts of the quality of care received” and thus to come to a reasonable conclusion and to “clarify the provision of maternity care by health care professionals”.

For these purposes, she chooses the descriptive, exploratory qualitative approach as the primary methodology and wants to achieve sufficient results this way. In the context of established goals and objectives the size of the sample as well as the chosen way to conduct interviews appears rather doubtable. More or less objective results cannot be achieved by non-structured interviews with five medical personnel representatives, especially taking into consideration the fact that these representatives are from different spheres of activity – there are nurses, general practitioners, consultants, etc. in the list of questioned people. Thus, even the author admits that the results cannot be generalized but can only open up some more interesting information that will throw light on the issue of medical care provision for pregnant refugees.

Remarkably, the results shown both from interviews with patients and with doctors proved to be highly positive. Women, in their turn, highly assess the conditions they are provided within the context of medical care examination, no matter whether they give birth to a child in that hospital or not. All patients appreciated highly the midwife care, the GP care, and hospital care they received, thus proving the point that the level of medical care provided to refugees in the UK is rather high and is built efficiently.

Discussing the present article, it is highly relevant to note that the official position on the provision of medical care to pregnant asylum-seekers in the UK appears to be not that optimistic as shown by Nabb’s research findings. It is enough to recollect the findings of Jenny McLeish (2002) who concluded that the needs of pregnant asylum seekers are not met at all; the article of this author written in co-authorship with Sarah Cutler and Cathy Stancer in 2002 eloquently titled “The crying shame” also speaks about the same problem. In connection with the current issue, it is also relevant to remember the articles of the Maternity Alliance (2004) assessing the needs of pregnant asylum seekers and the article of Stephen Stewart (2008) about a 23-year-old girl Ling Lin left in the UK streets penniless and helpless at the final period of her pregnancy.

Leslie Briscoe and Tina Lavender. “Exploring maternity care for asylum seekers and refugees”

The article by the mentioned authors is also focused on the issue of exploring the life of pregnant asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. However, when compared to the article of Judith Nabb, the authors concentrate on the issues of personal experiences of refugees and so do not deal much with the objective side of the issue.

As the problem of maternity care provision is one of the aching issues in the UK so far, the study conducted by the authors was aimed at exploring the real side of this process – they conducted the study in 2002 and 2003 with the application of many innovative methodological elements such as interviews, photographs, field notes, and observational methods. The methodology chosen was a longitudinal exploratory multiple case study which allowed the generalization of facts and generating a certain kind of statistical findings that would allow speaking about certain tendencies and common characteristics as well as summarizing the findings to reproduce a more or less objective image of what the level and peculiarities of maternity care services provided in the UK are.

The sample for the present study also appears to be insufficient as only four refugees who were subject to received maternity care services agreed to provide the researchers with necessary data, thus reducing the level of credibility of results. Besides, it is important to note that the women who agreed to take part in the research and who were free to present any relevant photos that reflected their perception of medical care they got refused from their photos being shown in the course of the study – only photos of surroundings and other meaningful elements were included, without women’s disclosure of identity.

In the process of the research, a set of findings were produced that may appear relevant and important not only for the study in general but for the particular understanding of issues connected with the maternity care providers in the UK. First of all these findings concern such issues as the perception of themselves, understanding in practice, and influence of social policy.

The individual perception of the situation lies within the borders of participants’ mentality – the way these women used to live in their countries, what peculiarities of culture they had and how it could be compared with the current situation they got into in the UK. The majority of women were driven to the UK against their will, because of a threat to their lives, so they generally perceived the care they received in the UK as a better way of life, no matter how efficient it was according to objective European standards.

Understanding in practice involved the issues of cross-cultural communication and the level of finding the common language all these women achieved in their way. The participant who knew English reported a much better attitude and success in the provision of care she received. Other women, even reporting the usage of a translator and being still satisfied with the care they got, also reported the communication problems that emerged from time to time and slowed down the interaction process, reducing its efficiency.

The influence of social policy goes without saying – the refugees are often treated in a hostile or highly careful way, which is the result of long-living stereotypes shaping the way of thinking for the UK citizens. However, the issues did not influence the level of care provision and only affected the mental status of the participants.

The topic may be complemented with other findings on the topic such as the work of the UK police concerning pregnant asylum seekers described in the BBC article of 2002, in which, as well as in the work of Diane Taylor and Hugh Muir (2009) deny the fact of imprisoning the asylum seekers of any category. Other important materials may be found in articles of Lesley Page (2004) titled “Caring for Pregnant Asylum Seekers” and in the information sheet of Maternity Action of 2009 “Maternity rights and benefits: refused (failed) asylum seekers”.

Bibliography

Briscoe, Lesley, and Lavender, Tina. “Exploring maternity care for asylum seekers and refugees”. British Journal of Midwifery, 2009, 17(1), pp. 17-23.

“Maternity rights and benefits: refused (failed) asylum seekers”, 2009. Web.

McLeish, Jenny. “Mothers in exile: Maternity of asylum seekers in England”, 2002. Web.

McLeish, Jenny, Cutler, Sarah, and Stancer, Cathy. “A crying shame: Pregnant asylum seekers and their babies in detention”, 2002. Web.

Nabb, Judith. “Pregnant asylum-seekers: perceptions of maternity service provision”. Royal College of Midwives-Evidence-Based Midwifery, 2006. Web.

Page, Lesley. “Caring for pregnant asylum seekers”. British Journal of Midwifery, 2004, Vol.12, Iss. 11, pp. 686.

“Pregnant Asylum Seekers”, BBC online. 2002. Web.

Stewart, Stephen. “Exclusive: The eight-months pregnant asylum seeker left penniless on the streets”, 2008. Web.

Taylor, Diane, and Muir, Hugh. “Asylum seekers jailed for having no passport”. The Guardian, 2005. Web.

The Maternity Service. “The Needs of Pregnant Asylum Seekers”, 2004. Web.

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Maternity Care for Asylum Seekers and Refugees

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