Statement from the Real Birth Company regarding the withdrawal of the RCM Accreditation Scheme

The Real Birth Company are issuing a Statement after the announcement that the RCM will no longer be continuing the Accreditation Scheme.

Our Accreditation with the RCM has now come to an end and we had applied to be re-assessed for continued affiliation to the Scheme.

During the re-application process and not before, we were made aware, on the 23rd July 2021 that the RCM had from this moment on made a decision to withdraw the Accreditation Scheme. This was several weeks after we had re-applied for RCM Accreditation.

While the loss of the accreditation process is understandable, there are many Apps and antenatal information points across the UK that are not run by midwives, up-dated, cross referenced or evidence based. With our training course being RCM accredited, it highlighted the standards we had set as an Organisation and was a mark of us achieving these standards.

We wrote to the RCM explaining our disappointment with the decision and received the following reply.

We are writing to inform you that The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) have decided that from this point onwards we will not undertake any new accreditations or reaccrediting when current accreditations expire.

We will be updating the information on the website to reflect the fact that the accreditation programme is at an end.

We thank you for taking part in the scheme, the decision to pause our accreditation scheme at this stage does not reflect on the benefits that this service has provided to the RCM and our members over the years we have been providing it, it just reflects the changing times we are in.

Kind regards

RCM education

We at “The Real Birth Company” feel a sense of sadness for all fellow legitimate providers and conscientious practitioners in the UK. We would like to reassure all Midwives, Hospitals, Government Organisations and pregnant women and familes who use our programme, that the withdrawing of the Scheme will in no way affect the good practice that we employ in our training and development of the Real Birth Programme or as a Company.

Our Midwifery Trainers all hold teaching certificates and qualifications and we will continue to update our programme frequently every year. We will continue to strive to achieve a Gold Standard level of teaching and support for anyone who teaches our programme.

We do still hold two further National Accreditations with recognised governing Bodies, these being :

i) FEDANT ( Federation of Antenatal Educators) and,

ii) ORCHA (Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Applications)

We will update this statement if any further announcements or accreditations are achieved.

Zoe Wright

The Real Birth Company