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Rebecca Heorton

Award Received: 
Midwives Award
Project: 
completing the final year of an MSc in Advanced Child Protection
Year awarded: 
2023

I was given £1000 to help cover the costs of my Masters in Advanced Child Protection in 2023.

This enabled me to complete the MSc. In my final year I focused on Infant removal, a particularly uncomfortable area of midwifery and child protection, scoring a merit. The Masters enabled me to explore all aspects of children’s safeguarding, augmenting my understanding of this subject.

My background was in community midwifery and homebirth. Then I became interested in safeguarding, enabling me to retain a specialist compassionate and holistic view on women with safeguarding issues, facilitating them to achieve the best possible social outcome, whilst retaining a focus on child protection.

This passionate beginning has run throughout my MSc, which I have been able to use to get my job as Named Midwife (interim) at Imperial NHS foundation Trust.

I am now able to make more executive decisions in relation to particular interest topics such as; contemporary understandings of the impact of mental health on parenting ability in liaison with mental health services; training and supervision – how to organise and support maternity staff at 2 large inner London hospitals; and empathetic care for women experiencing Infant removal and other child protection issues.

I have already undertaken webinars on Domestic Violence, as well as held multi-disciplinary discussions with partner organisations and the Integrated Care Board/ LSCP. This has been informed directly by the research and learning I acquired from the Masters. 

The MSc included

  • Law Policy and Inter-agency working

  • Risk, Analysis and Decision Making

  • Help, Support and Direct Work

  • Organisations, Systems and Leadership

  • Dissertation (Infant Removal)

I thank Iolanthe for providing the money to help fund this -  as well as for the additional sense that someone out there cared what I was doing & believed in my ability to do it!

I couldn’t have done it without you, and the award ceremony was a really wonderous reception – especially hearing what other passionate midwives have used their funding for.