ANMF (Vic Branch) Assistant Secretary Nicole Allan and Victorian Minister for Health Mary-Anne Thomas at the launch of the Victorian Maternity Taskforce Report – rural and regional.
The Allan Government’s newest maternity and newborn services report is a plan to ensure rural and regional Victorian hospitals have the workforce and models of care available, so families have access to safe, reliable care as close as possible to home.
Victorian Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas released the Victorian Maternity Taskforce Report – rural and regional in early November, with a commitment to implement its nine recommendations.
The Victorian Maternity Taskforce was established in 2024 to strengthen maternity care by addressing complex challenges facing Victoria’s maternity services, including workforce challenges, with a focus on rural and regional Victoria.
The ANMF has welcomed the first recommendation to be implemented in the quality and safety lens, which will be the appointment of Victoria’s first chief midwife. The chief midwife will ensure the profession of midwives are represented in all discussions about their profession and their work.
The role will bring dedicated, statewide clinical and professional leadership to Victoria’s maternity and newborn services. The new chief midwife will also lead the implementation of the taskforce’s recommendations relating to maternity services as well as provide clinical and professional advice to government.
ANMF (Vic Branch) Assistant Secretary Nicole Allan, who is a nurse and a midwife and was a member of the Victorian Maternity Taskforce, said the establishment of a chief midwife role is significant.
‘To know that there is a midwife, who understands the maternity system, at the table speaking for midwives and leading when maternity care is discussed and decisions are made is an important achievement.
‘ANMF (Vic Branch), representing more than 7000 midwifery members, looks forward to working closely with the chief midwife, who will need to have the authority to drive reform and implement the taskforce’s recommendations,’ Ms Allan said.
The government is also establishing a new online guide called My Maternity Journey to better support women through pregnancy and birth.
The third recommendation to be implemented by the end of 2025 will be the release of a Respectful Maternity and Newborn Care Framework, designed by Safer Care Victoria, to support women and families to have a positive experience by embedding respectful care including trauma-informed skills and communication.
Ms Thomas said the ‘framework will enable health services right across the state to benchmark themselves against best practice and ensure that we are all working towards delivering the care that mothers and babies need and expect here in Victoria’.
The taskforce findings
The taskforce’s findings were based on extensive consultation with health services, the workforce, the community and experts.
It found Victoria had an ‘uneven’ fertility rate with lower births in rural and regional areas and rapid increases in growth corridors. There were 76,411 births in 2022 compared to 73,905 in 2023.
The maternal age is rising, with 31.95 years as the median age in 2023, and there is an increasing proportion of culturally and linguistically diverse mothers. Maternal healthcare outcomes have improved, however it is more common for pregnant women to have chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension.
The changing profile of pregnant women who had more complex needs also meant maternity staff required enhanced capabilities.
The taskforce identified common challenges including ‘workforce, recruitment and retention, limited access to models of care that support choice, gaps in strategic leadership and service planning, and poor access to culturally safe and specialist services close to home’.
Victoria has the country’s largest midwifery workforce, with 9633 midwives according to the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia’s June 2025 report.
The taskforce found that building a future maternity workforce was hampered by the lack of maternity-specific workforce planning and initiatives that did not meet the workforce’s changing needs. It identified significant opportunities to strengthen services by enabling clinicians, particularly midwives, to work to their full scope of practice; expanding the use of endorsed midwives and nurse practitioners to increase workforce capacity and enhancing midwifery leadership and collaboration across local health service networks.
The taskforce also reviewed the 2024 Midwifery Futures Report, which found widespread local staffing shortfalls, particularly in non-metropolitan areas; and that one in three midwives were considering leaving the profession amid high rates of burnout, anxiety, stress and low rates of satisfaction.
ANMF midwifery members have told us they want to work in a system that provides access, choice and flexibility to them as a workforce and to the women in their care.
ANMF (Vic Branch) Secretary Maddy Harradence said ‘ANMF is doing everything within our power to improve the working conditions for our midwifery members with improved pay and allowances, improved ratios, and improved models of care that ensure midwives are working to their full scope and we’ll continue to work with the government and the department.’
What are the taskforce’s recommendations?
The taskforce’s nine recommendations, including 23 sub-recommendations, aim to drive system change across ‘four pillars’: consumer experience, access and models of care, quality and safety and maternity workforce. They are:
- Provide consumer-facing resources and redesign consumer feedback mechanisms so that women and families can access information and have choice and feel respected across maternity care.
- Familiarise partnerships with Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) to ensure continuity of care and provide culturally safe and responsive pathways for First Nations women and families.
- Design and implement a statewide maternity and newborn system action plan that strengthens regional partnerships.
- Provide care that is personalised and prioritises choice and experience for women, further supported by a personalised maternity digital health record.
- Standardise and maintain statewide maternity and newborn clinical guidelines
- A contemporaneous and interoperable maternity and newborn medical record, data collection, monitoring and reporting platform that provides a whole-of-system planning view and moves the system from reactive to proactive.
- Strengthen executive and board risk identification and management of maternity and newborn risks.
- Establish data systems to collect and monitor maternity and newborn workforce deficits that determine sustainability of services.
- Develop a maternity and newborn workforce plan and implementation strategy for the Victorian maternity and newborn system.
What’s next?
Victoria has 52 maternity services, including 33 in regional areas, which provide varying levels of care depending on their local capability.
To improve access, the taskforce’s report has outlined the need for consistency and coordination across these services. Victoria’s new local health service networks will play a key role in connecting women and families to the right services across the region.
Each network is developing a clinical service plan for its region, setting out roles and responsibilities for every hospital providing maternity and newborn care and how they will work together to strengthen care, improve equity, and support better outcomes for women and babies.
