Strategic Perinatal Workforce Plan for Wales approval
Published: 8 April 2025
Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) is excited to announce that the Strategic Perinatal Workforce Plan for Wales has been approved and will launch in Spring/Summer 2025.
This is the first Strategic Perinatal Workforce Plan for Wales, designed to recruit, retain, train and transform the current and future perinatal workforce in NHS Wales. The plan was developed following engagement with staff and consideration of recommendations from national maternity and neonatal reviews.
The plan addresses the needs of maternity and neonatal services and is grounded in strong multi-professional working across midwifery, nursing, medicine, pharmacy, healthcare science and allied health professions—recognising the inter-dependencies within maternity and neonatal teams.
Key areas of focus include:
🔹 Growing the workforce – A strategic approach to attraction, retention and sustainable staffing through workforce analytics, expanded training pathways, standardised international recruitment, collaboration with the NHS Executive National Imaging Programme to support sonography services, and strengthened teamwork and succession planning.
🔹 Education and learning – A multi-professional approach to training that includes promoting training equity for locally employed doctors, expanding support worker pathways and providing development across perinatal services in areas such as genomics, public health and neonatal outreach
🔹 Leadership and culture – Strengthening leadership and workplace culture by creating safe, supportive environments, embedding compassionate leadership, promoting continuous learning, and evaluating clinical supervision to support professional growth.
🔹 Transforming the workforce – Empowering staff to embrace digital transformation, while embedding quality improvement, innovation and research, strengthening regional collaboration and developing a skilled Maternal Medicine workforce to deliver integrated, person-centred care
Lisa Llewelyn, Executive Director of Nursing, Health Professions and Quality at HEIW commented, "I am delighted to introduce the first Strategic Perinatal Workforce Plan for Wales. This plan sets out a clear and ambitious direction for strengthening our maternity and neonatal workforce through education, leadership and innovation. It recognises the vital contribution of all professions working in perinatal services and outlines how we will work collaboratively to support, develop and grow a workforce equipped to meet the needs of families now and in the future."
For more information, you can visit our webpage and follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn via #PerinatalWorkforceWales
