By now, public sector workplaces should have, as part of the Workplace Implementation Committee, discussed and confirmed the implementation of the governance processes within their health services to ensure that endorsed midwives can work to their full scope of practice.
This is in accordance with Clause 32A of the 2024-28 public sector EBA: embedding recognition of endorsed midwives in the EBA.
The clause defines an endorsed midwife as a midwife who:
- currently holds an NMBA endorsement for scheduled medicines for midwives; and
- is contracted to or otherwise required by the Employer to undertake any of the core functions of an endorsed midwife, as identified by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia.
The clause comes with an entitlement (32A.2), payable from 1 June this year.
This entitlement is payable to any midwife who meets the above definition of an endorsed midwife, and will be paid, in addition to their salary, in accordance with the ‘Endorsed Midwife’ rate in Appendix 2, Part 2 on all hours, including overtime. The allowance is aligned to the existing Grad Dip qualification allowance rate.
The allowance is to be paid in addition to receipt of any other qualification allowances.
How ANMF (Vic Branch) secured this clause
This clause exits in the new EBA thanks to the advocacy of ANMF midwifery members including Roxane Ingleton and Phoebe Ely, who submitted a motion to the 2022 delegates conference motion that read:
‘That this conference requests that ANMF (Vic Branch) include in the 2024 public sector log of claims recognition of the endorsed midwife.’
Roxane recently shared with ANMF some thoughts about seeing the clause added to the EBA:
‘While undertaking the extra study to become an endorsed midwife in 2022,’ she said, ‘I learned that in other states there were roles within public hospitals for endorsed midwives. I could see the potential was there for being able to work to our full scope within the public setting, which would be particularly useful in rural and remote areas so I thought: if I can get it in the EBA as a recognised classification, it will in some way give “permission” to the health services to look at how they can integrate EMs into the hospital system.
‘I’m not sure I can describe the satisfaction that comes from seeing your delegates motion in a new EBA,’ she added. ‘Knowing that one little thing I did has the potential to benefit midwives right across the state, and in this case potentially set in motion a really significant change to the way midwives can work within the public health system… there’s nothing like it.’
Endorsed midwife models have been successfully implemented in many public maternity services across the state, at Northern Health, Wodonga, Maryborough and Cohuna to name a few. ANMF looks forward to hearing that this will soon become business as usual for all maternity services.
