Public home births receives funding, but concerns about mums-to-be missing out
By Kirra Livingstone
THE state’s first publicly funded home births unit has opened on the Sunshine Coast, but expectant mothers from many hinterland towns will not be eligible to participate.
Queensland Health opened its first state service at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital (SCUH) this month. The program, which has received $1.2 million of government funding, allows women wanting to have a home birth access to publicly funded midwives to assist in their pregnancies.
However, there are a number of restrictions surrounding the program, including only funding low risk pregnancies and living a ‘safe distance’ from the participating hospital. Critics say the definition of a low risk pregnancy is ambiguous and there is also no guidelines on which towns and residents are ineligible for the program. It is understood that mothers-to-be need to be living within 30 minutes of Sunshine Coast University Hospital.
Homebirth Queensland advocacy coordinator, Azure Rigney, said her organisation had been advocating for transparency and fine tuning of the PFHB program. “With SCUH specifically, in the last six months I’ve had three women complain about the geographical and low-risk restrictions, and haven’t heard back from the hospital,” she said. “If I could say generally I have said to the hospital, you need to at least publish what your geographic restrictions are and what the low risk restrictions are so at least women can make an informed decision.
“If a woman submits an expression of interest, they must receive a response saying she’s enrolled in the program within a week.” Ms Rigney added that neither low-risk pregnancies and geographical distances should affect eligibility of the PFHB program.
“There has been a study by Safer Care Victoria, and they showed high risk women also have better outcomes with a planned home birth, so there really is no reason why it should just be restricted to low risk women,” she said. Owner of home births pools, Earthy Birth’s Rosie Parton, said she was thrilled to see the new program on the coast. But she agreed there were limitations on what was considered a lowrisk pregnancy. “It would be great to see the program expand physically to take in a much wider catchment, but also expand to cater for more women with diverse pregnancies,” she said.
A Sunshine Coast Health spokesperson said: “The publicly funded home birth service will commence with a determined travel time of within 30 minutes of the Hospital, based on evidence from other states ensuring a safe travel distance from the home birth location to the hospital.” “Comparable home birth programs in Australia all use a 30-minute drive to hospitals.”
The spokesperson added the service can provide 120 home births a year, and have received 120 expressions of interest.