Guest blog by Susan Baines, proposer of the More Midwives campaign

I am proud to say that, “I am a Midwife”. I have been one since 1986 and prior to that I was a S.R.N. specialising in Gynaecology. So all of my working life I have been involved in the care of women. Currently I am a Lecturer in Midwifery and an Independent Midwife. Over the years I have witnessed, and also been pro-actively involved in, many changes directed at improving services for women during the childbirth continuum. However, upon reflection I can conclude that modernisation has not achieved all it set out to and that some aspects of care are currently a lot worse for women than at any other time I have ever practised. 

When I started my career, midwives were community based and knew women and their families personally; they were a point of contact for a myriad of social concerns and were respected and valued. Today it is argued that pregnancy is more complicated and professionally demanding than before, with the Midwife needing to draw on far more technical skill - as a result her practice is often driven by a fear of litigation and is therefore often defensive. This serves to impact on the choices and support women receive. There is a reputed shortage of 3500 trained Midwives currently and some NHS units are at breaking point. Staff shortages impact adversely on normal birth and home birth statistics, and postnatal care is in some areas a postcode lottery.  A lot of Midwives are working on their good will in order to do their best for women in their care.

After my two adult daughters left home, my husband and I returned to the small town where I had been brought up and I looked for a WI to join. There was none. I therefore decided to set one up. In 2011 Horwich WI was created and I became President. Our numbers slowly grew and one day a communication arrived via our secretary asking members for ideas for resolutions.

Our treasurer was at that time pregnant and I remember we chatted about her experiences and frustrations with local maternity services and her rushed and limited antenatal appointments.  It was then that I proposed to the membership that we create a resolution about Midwifery care and particularly about training, recruiting and employing more Midwives so as to better support mothers.

Everyone seemed so eager and there was a buzz around the room as the group recalled their experiences. It was so interesting to hear from our more mature members that they could recall with clarity their Midwife’s name, such had been the impression she had made upon them. Younger members on the other hand could not do so, as they had received team care and had never seen the same Midwife twice antenatally or known the Midwife when their labour had started. 

Our resolution was sent to the Lancashire Federation. We were surprised and delighted to later hear that ours had been short listed, especially being such a new WI. I recall that the next few months were a frenzy of presentations with other local WI’s in order to drum up support.

I was asked to present the resolution at the AGM at the Royal Albert Hall and I remember feeling unusually very calm, even though faced with thousands of faces. I think this was because I really felt we were “one” in the auditorium. Everyone was so kind and supportive. The resolution achieved 96% in favour and was duly passed.  My spirits soared with the huge backing of the WI membership. I felt that we as women were standing together to support women and Midwives.

A few weeks later I was invited to attend WI headquarters in London and become part of a joint research advisory group looking into women’s experiences of maternity services. I was in the company of Elizabeth Duff from the NCT, and Jacque Gerrard from the RCM.

In May 2013 the research study ’Support Overdue: Women’s Experiences of Maternity Services’ was published.  The study made three salient findings: that choice remains an aspiration and not a reality for most mothers, that current maternity care is fragmented, and that postnatal care is a postcode lottery.

From the offset, WI members worked pro-actively to increase awareness of the issues faced by mothers and their Midwives including writing to their local MPs. The NFWI also collected almost 30,000 signatures calling for urgent action, which were presented to the Minister of Health Dr Dan Poulter in October 2013.

To date, the NMC has been receiving more complaints from mothers about their Midwifery and Maternity care experiences than ever before and I feel this is due in part to the increased awareness and pro-activity of over 215,000 WI members up and down the country. Women talk to other women and this is extremely powerful dialogue regarding the standards of care they should expect to receive.

I wish to thank my WI, Lancashire Federation and NFWI for their support of women and for their support of Midwives.

You can read more about the campaign so far and its successes here: https://www.thewi.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/94839/FINAL_A5_Midwives-all-8-pages.pdf 

Climate Change Impact on Gardeners

Guest blog by Kate Mawer – WI Climate Ambassador, Braunston WI, Northamptonshire Federation

As an amateur gardener I enjoy the uncertainty that working with the seasons brings. Gardeners are adaptable people, it is no surprise when a late frost catches us out and an apple crop is poor or when a mild winter brings more devastation from slugs to our hostas. The changes we experience year on year can be part of the fun and is what maintains our passion for gardening. This year my herbaceous perennials are looking wonderful, filling every gap in my garden, and the new planting in the village community garden has established quickly because of the spring and summer rain.

It is the greater occurrence of more extreme weather events that is the concern of the gardener. I am fortunate that my garden is not in a flood risk area and so I have not had to replace a garden that has been devastated by floods. As chairperson of the Braunston Village Gardens Association gardeners are telling me about how they have had to replant their produce gardens this year as they have lost a high proportion of their first plantings due to the wet and increase in pests. This is costly, time consuming and demoralising.

As gardeners we are custodians of biodiversity. Extreme weather events create uncertainty. Gardeners may be put off by the challenges of new diseases and unfamiliar pests that are difficult to control. It is a concern that for some the solution is to replace plants with hard landscaping or artificial turf reducing the opportunities for wildlife to thrive and ironically further adding to the issue of flooding.

Climate change is complex. Planting Mediterranean gardens and investing in a water butt system, at one time popular suggestions for gardeners coping with climate change, is not a solution when the dry summer has been replaced by one of the wettest on record.  

I, like other gardeners, appreciate the physical and emotional health benefits of this hobby. We will continue to garden and even thrive on achieving successes despite the unusual seasons. We are significant players in terms of food production, wildlife conservation and flood control and understand that working with others now to limit carbon emissions will make a significant difference and benefit the gardeners of the future.

 Join the October Week of Action!

Join us from 8th-16th October in a Week of Action to celebrate the people, places and things we want to protect from climate change, and make sure MPs feel that love. People all over the UK will be lobbying their MPs in their local area, and we'd love you to be involved.

We'll be seeing nature walks, tea parties, classic lobbies, community energy visits and all sorts of other events to show MPs why you would like them to take action to protect your community from the impacts of climate change. All this will involve MPs so that politicians see, feel and hear how much their constituents care about what we could lose to climate change.

More details, including an action pack and a range of resources to support you, are available on the NFWI website at www.theWI.org.uk/climate-change

The Women’s Institute: More activism and adaptation than Jam and Jerusalem

Guest blog by Johanna Wilson, Borough Belles WI

The office where it all happens...

It felt strange to be entering the heart of the Women’s Institute in London. While I am the Social Media Officer for the Borough Belles WI and have been a proud Belle since last year, that’s only part of the reason I am here. The other? Curiosity. I moved to London to work as part of the Charityworks Graduate Scheme, which offers the opportunity for trainees to explore the charity sector further. Hearing from organisations across the sector got me thinking: while I understand how traditional charities work, how does an organisation like the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI) work? An organisation that is made up of smaller charities with their own boards, that operates on a federation model and whose campaigns are determined by the membership. I got in touch to find out more about how the NFWI supports members to campaign, and the Public Affairs and Communications teams were kind enough to let me visit for a day to find out for myself!

The WI has a proud history and has thrived since it was founded in 1915 to help develop rural communities and encourage women to become involved in food production during WW1, becoming what is now the largest voluntary women's organisation in the UK. The model can be a bit complex to get your head around. Your own WI is an individual charity while your Federation provides opportunities and support for a number of WIs. The National Federation is a national charity which represents WI members across the UK and provides guidance and support to Federations and WIs, and a lot of their work goes unseen; in fact, some WI members don’t even know they exist. When I visited the office, everyone was pretty excited preparing for the upcoming Annual Meeting (AM). The AM is the key date in the NFWI’s calendar. It’s not only a logistical challenge for the Events team and an important WI tradition. It is the votes of the delegates at the AM that sets the organisation’s campaign work for years to come. It decides who they’ll be working with, where they’ll be focusing their energies, what actions members can do and what message they’ll be sharing. Though there are a lot of stages to the process, every resolution is proposed by a WI member and shortlisted by members. These resolutions are then debated throughout the organisation by local WIs before being brought to the AM, and once a resolution is adopted, it becomes part of a bank of mandates dating back to the earliest days of the WI, and can be worked on at any point in the future.

When discussing the campaign resolutions put forward this year with the team, there are clear benefits to both. Food poverty is a huge challenge, with food bank use in the UK at a record high and eight million people in the UK struggling to put food on the table. At the same time, dementia care is an issue that is growing in importance and dementia carers are currently saving UK services £11 billion annually. The WI currently has no resolution on unpaid care, an issue that still predominantly affects women and in the Public Affairs department they have to keep an eye to campaigns that could open up other avenues for work (the fun thing about writing this retrospectively is that I now know both of these resolutions have passed!) There is a huge variety in WI campaigns work, both on a daily basis and in the new campaigns that have been chosen by members. Just a few of these are:

• More Midwives: The WI’s Midwives campaign has been widely celebrated and since its launch in 2012, NFWI research has been cited in NHS England’s National Maternity Review and the WI have contributed to The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence’s first ever safe-staffing guidance for midwifery services. One staff member at NFWI was so inspired by the campaign that she has since gone on to become a midwife herself!

• Care Not Custody: In 2008, the WI passed a resolution calling for an end to the inappropriate detention of people with mental health problems and has been working with the Prison Reform Trust towards this. This was a campaign of particular interest to me, not only due to my interest in mental health but also because the charity I work for runs Liaison and Diversion services. Mental health in the criminal Justice system is sadly still a huge challenge, but following on from the trial sites and despite delays, the NFWI is hopeful that a full rollout of these services will be announced soon - a huge success and a promise of support when people need it the most.

• Climate Change: While this campaign is a longstanding one, there will be a lot of new actions and campaign work coming up. So watch this space, or if you want to get in on the ground floor, apply to be a volunteer Climate Ambassador and work with NFWI to look at climate change in your local area (details here).

Yet what seems most surprising is the continuity of campaigns. To celebrate the centenary last year, we Belles did a whistle-stop tour of the century, and looking at what previous campaigns have been, some issues have clearly remained at the heart of the Women’s Institute. Yes, it seems unlikely that a resolution 'that this meeting, remembering that our young Queen has duties as a wife and mother urges the nation as a whole not to overwork her Majesty' (1952) would get passed now, but the WI has spent one hundred and one years speaking out on the environment, education, women’s rights and rural services, and will be fighting for these issues as we move into the next century.

The team are quick to acknowledge the challenges they face and where they plan to make improvements. The WI is still an organisation that is predominantly rural and while the number of women living in rural areas who are members is fantastic, there are practical challenges to communicating with them. There was even a case of one WI streaming the Centenary AM for their members, which promptly took out the internet in their whole town! Because of this, WI Life is the only consistent way to reach everyone, which brings its own challenges in terms of sharing information quickly, especially for those of us who are used to checking our emails religiously! The WI has a huge geographical reach, which can make it challenging to make sure campaigns are relevant to all members. It’s not rare that proposed resolutions don’t address the current situation in Wales or the Islands who have separate parliaments and work in a completely different legal framework. The Public Affairs team always has to have a view to the wider picture.

Yet it is the strengths of the WI that stand out, and the strength of its members that makes it so formidable. Members of the WI are there because they want to be there and the organisation is member-led. While the small public affairs team doesn’t always have the detailed policy knowledge needed for a new campaign, they are able to create strong partnerships with national organisations, where their partners bring the resources and political links and the WI bring 220,000 engaged and passionate members across the country. The range of campaigns means that there’s always an action to do or somewhere to push for change; from specific climate change action weeks to legal changes around country of origin labelling on food. While the old-world “Jam and Jerusalem” stereotype can linger in the minds of some press offices and production companies, the variety of what the WI does and the women who are members have broken down this stuffy reputation over time.

As the make-up and lives of members change, the NFWI is re-examining their ways of communicating and selecting resolutions. Work to review the resolutions process and consider ways to improve it is underway. The NFWI is also currently organising a full members’ census. With new members joining all the time and new WIs being started every week, now is a perfect time to ask members for their views on campaigns, Denman and ensuring education is accessible for all, as well as something as basic as how people would like to be contacted. The NFWI always looks to change and evolve to ensure that the WI represents every member, old and new, while keeping true to the its roots and ethos.

The Public Affairs team’s newsletter relaunched recently, so you can sign up here to receive regular updates. If there has been one takeaway message I left the NFWI with, it is that the members are at the heart of what is done here and they want to hear from them, not only about their ideas and requests but even just about what they are up to. Hearing from members is what keeps the NFWI connected and they’re always looking to hear from more people - remember, any member can submit a resolution. So finally, all that remains is to say a big thank you to Lisa, Oliver, Jana, Emma, Joanna, Charlotte and Fiona for hosting me for the day!

How to find your voice

This is guest bog from Lewis Shand Smith, chief ombudsman at Ombudsman Services, exploring the complaints landscape in the UK, and offering advice on how WI members can find their voice when it comes to making a complaint.

Last year, there were 52 million complaints about products and services according to new research from Ombudsman Services.

However, the third annual Consumer Action Monitor – the most comprehensive multi-sector survey of its kind in the UK – found there were a staggering 66 million complaints not acted upon, indicating that we’re only really seeing the tip of the iceberg.

Having your wrong put right
Consumers are ignoring millions of problems each year because they would rather suffer in silence than go through the perceived hassle of complaining – but it’s not as complex and time-consuming as you might think.

If you’ve ever had an issue with a retailer or your energy or communications provider then you’re not alone. A quarter of all complaints in the UK relate to an issue with a retailer, with faulty products the most common cause of dissatisfaction amongst consumers. The most problematic sectors were telecommunications and energy.

Whatever your age or issue, you shouldn’t have to put up with slow broadband or shoddy customer service. All consumers have the right to complain and a right to independent redress if the company you complain to doesn’t help.

An ombudsman covers each of these sectors, which provide free, quick and simple ways to reach a resolution.

As a result, we’ve prepared a number of helpful tips below to help you become a better complainer if you have a problem with a product or service you’ve purchased:

How to make your complaints heard
1.    Firstly identify what you want to achieve, have a clear idea of what it is you want to achieve from complaining. Would you be happy with an apology, the wrong put right, or do you want financial compensation?

2.    Don’t get emotional – keep your anger in check and don’t get mad. Be assertive without being aggressive

3.    Don’t be embarrassed – it’s your right to complain if you’re not satisfied

4.    Admit your part in the problem if you have any fault

5.    Address one complaint at a time, ensure what you say is clear and fair

6.    Keep records of all correspondence, paperwork, bills and receipts, if asked to send them anywhere make sure you send photocopies and keep originals

7.    If you’re not getting results complaining directly to the company, identify the person or organisation who has the power to make changes and help

8.    If your complaint has not been resolved quickly (normally within eight weeks), you can take your complaint to an organisation like Ombudsman Services. 

Changes to the law that will help you
In July 2015, new legislation come into force requiring all businesses in the UK to offer their consumers access to independent redress for any unresolved complaints. If they aren’t signed up to an alternative dispute resolution scheme, like Ombudsman Services, they must explain this to their customers.

It’s not compulsory for all companies to belong to an ADR scheme, but it shows that the company values customer service. Tread carefully if you decide to buy a product or service from a company that doesn’t have an independent way of resolving your complaints.

Resolution amendments announcement

Following the recent NFWI Board of Trustees meeting, we can announce that the six proposed amendments to the 2016 resolutions were not accepted.  Each WI has been contacted to explain the reasons behind these decisions.   An amendment is a proposal to alter the wording or details of a resolution without affecting the principle of the resolution. An amendment must be clearly worded to show exactly which part of the resolution it is proposed to alter. In order to meet the criteria, an amendment must not materially change a resolution. It should enhance it, whilst retaining the original objective.   WIs only need to consider an amendment if it is accepted by the NFWI Board to go to the AM. This means that this year WIs do not need to discuss any amendments.

Following this, please note that the wording of the resolutions under debate at this year’s Annual Meeting in Brighton on 11 June remain unchanged as follows:

Avoid food waste, address food poverty
The WI calls on all supermarkets to sign up to a voluntary agreement to avoid food waste, thereby passing surplus food on to charities thus helping to address the issue of increasing food poverty in the UK.

Appropriate care in hospitals for people with dementia
We call upon HM Government and the NHS to provide facilities to enable carers to stay with people with Alzheimer's disease and dementia that have been admitted into hospital.

What happens next?
If you haven’t already had your resolutions meeting, please remember that all WIs get one vote for each resolution, and need to vote for or against each resolution. This means that WIs can vote for both resolutions if they support them both, or against both if they support neither. WIs should not vote for one resolution over the other, but need to look at both resolutions independently and vote for or against each of them. If both resolutions achieve a majority of votes for, then the NFWI will pass both resolutions, and the NFWI will campaign on both issues.

About the resolutions process
The WI resolutions process is truly democratic; every single issue that the WI has worked on since 1915 has come from members’ own concerns.  Every resolution is written by WI members themselves; the NFWI offers advice and help if needed, but please remember that every resolution is written by WI members who wish to tackle a particular issue or concern that they want to highlight and change.

Every campaign is proposed by WI members, and then the whole membership debates and votes throughout the year-long WI resolutions process.  This year long process ensures that each member has the chance to be involved and consider the options; it really is democracy in action.  Every planned campaign seeks to enable members to work locally to evoke a national change; working with fellow members, their wider community and MPs, depending on the topic under discussion.

Campaigning locally
Whilst the NFWI resolutions process is the national framework enabling members to engage with campaigning and Public Affairs, every single federation and WI can propose, select, and vote for their own local campaigns – WIs have been working on local issues that are important to their own communities since the very first meetings were held over 100 years ago. 

Review of the resolutions process
Over the past few months, the NFWI Public Affairs team and committee have been looking at the process and considering whether it could be altered to allow even more members to get involved and truly engage in WI campaigns, and to enable the organisation to do even more positive work.  All WIs will be contacted over the next few months to ask for their views on campaigning and the resolution process through this consultation, and feedback will be shared with be shared after the Autumn National Council meeting later in the year.

COOL back on the agenda

It may be hard to believe, but it’s more than three years since the horse meat scandal hit the headlines. What started as a slow drip of allegations that our food system was contaminated with horse meat soon became a flood as the scale of the crisis emerged.

A huge loss of public trust followed, and while it was clear that criminal networks had successfully infiltrated our food systems, the public’s disappointment was firmly directed at supermarkets and government institutions.

Two months after news of the scandal broke, a survey conducted by Which? showed that consumer confidence in the food industry had fallen by a quarter, with 68% of the public feeling that the government wasn't giving adequate attention to enforcing labelling laws.  Yet three years on, has anything actually changed? Have we become a nation more in tune with our food system; that demands to know what we eat and where it comes from, and that makes sure that what we eat is what it says on the label?

Food transparency is not a new issue for the WI. In 2010, a resolution was passed asking for greater clarity on country of origin labelling (COOL). Too often members were confronted with confusing origin labelling and were unable to make informed choices about the meat they were buying. At that time origin labelling for meat was not a mandatory requirement, and where it was detailed on labels, the origin could be given as the country where it underwent the last “substantial change”.

Since the WI kicked off its campaign there has been significant progress on COOL. In 2015, EU rules came into force which introduced the principle that unprocessed sheep, goat, chicken and pork meat products would be required to specify the country in which the animal was reared and slaughtered (this was already a requirement for beef, which also had to specify place of birth).

However, despite this progress, there is still a long way to go before clear country of origin labelling is the norm in UK supermarkets. The majority of the products contaminated in the horsemeat scandal were processed products, such as ready meals, meatballs and ‘beef’ burgers. But these processed meat products are still not required to display its country of origin. The WI wants to see COOL extended to all meat products. And not only because of  traceability and transparency issues.

The WI’s campaign is about clarity and consumer choice. Shoppers need clear and accurate information to make informed choices about the foods they buy.

With British farmers struggling financially, enabling them to champion British meat which meets strict animal welfare and safety standards is vital. While premium products may champion British meat, value cuts and ready meals often contain cheaper imported meat. No one is arguing that these should be restricted, but clear country of origin labelling would encourage shoppers to acknowledge and question price differences, and then make better informed choices.

This week MEPs have an opportunity to vote on a resolution to extend COOL to all processed meat and dairy products. If passed, there will be an opportunity for the European Commission to consider this issue further.

The European Commission’s own research shows that consumers want clarity on the origin of processed meat products, but the Commission has argued that the cost of new labelling requirements is too high.

But the EU Environment Committee believes that extending COOL initially to lightly processed meat and dairy products such as cheese and sausages (which are the products consumers are most concerned about) would not be as costly and could present an important first step in extending COOL to all products.

The first recommendation of the Eliott Review commissioned by the government in the wake of the horse meat scandal was to put consumers first. Three years on, it feels like progress has slowed, and despite public concern about transparency and traceability in our food system, consumers are still in the dark.

While clear country of origin labelling won’t solve all the problems in our food system, it would go a long way in restoring public trust in our food system, allowing consumers to make informed choices about what they eat, and allowing farmers to compete on an even playing field.

The WI believes that next week’s resolution is an important step in ensuring that COOL is extended to include processed meat products and will be urging MEPs to support it.

Become a Climate Ambassador

Today is Earth Day 2016 and marks the first step towards putting into practice the Paris climate deal, an historic agreement to tackle climate change agreed by world leaders at the end of 2015.

Over 160 countries are expected to sign the agreement at a ceremony held at the UN headquarters in New York, making it the largest UN signing ceremony to date. This pledge from so many countries shows the strong support for tackling climate change around the world.

In practice the commitments will only come into force when 55 countries covering 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions ratify the agreement, meaning that they have approval within their own countries to accept the terms of the deal.

The Paris Climate Deal 

The UN conference on climate change, held in Paris at the end of last year, resulted in this historic pledge from world leaders. Representatives from almost 200 countries agreed the ground breaking deal to tackle climate change. It included an ambition to keep global warming below 1.5⁰C and a long term goal to bring global emissions down to zero. 

The agreement marks the first time that virtually every country on Earth has pledged to constrain its greenhouse gas emissions with a view to keeping global warming since pre-industrial times below the commonly-used ‘danger threshold’ of 2⁰C .

The deal is a vital step in the right direction, it is not perfect but it lays the foundations for a low carbon future. The government now needs to take action to deliver on these ambitious targets.

Climate Ambassadors 

The agreement was only possible because so many groups came together to call for action on climate change. From WI members sharing hearts last February,  to those who joined more than 9000 people in London in June 2015 to lobby their MP . We will be keeping up the momentum over the next year and need your support to help protect our environment. 

Over the coming months we will be recruiting volunteers from the membership to act as Climate Ambassadors. Register your interest by emailing publicaffairs@nfwi.org.uk

The NFWI will provide expert-led training on the causes and impacts of climate change, training on successfully engaging people on this issue and a toolkit of further resources. The ambassadors will work with the NFWI to produce a local case study, looking into the causes and impacts of climate change in their local area, and will work to raise awareness of the issue locally.

WI members have vital stories to tell about the impact of our changing climate. The NFWI would like to harness the experiences of members to raise awareness of the things that could be lost to climate change.

October Week of Action 

Join us from 10th-16th October in a Week of Action to celebrate the people, places and things we want to protect from climate change, and make sure MPs feel that love. People all over the UK will be lobbying their MPs in their local area, and we’d love you to be involved. 

We’ll be seeing nature walks, tea parties, lobby meetings, community energy visits and all sorts of other events to show MPs why you would like them to take action to protect your community from the impacts of climate change. All this will involve MPs so that politicians see, feel and hear how much their constituents care about what we could lose to climate change.  

So it's time to get thinking! What can you do in your area to start that conversation with your local MP?

Sign up by emailing publicaffairs@nfwi.org.uk to let us know if you’re interested in attending or organising an event, and for more information.

Find out more about becoming a Climate Ambassador and joining the October Week of Action at www.thewi.org.uk/climate-change