Speakers at the Oxford conference (October 2007)

Ethel Burns
A midwifery lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, Ethel has a particular fascination for care and underpinning evidence base relating to labour and birth. Areas of research activity include aromatherapy during labour and water birth. Active in clinical practice and works on midwifery related projects in different countries.

Mary Cronk MBE (see Bristol conference)

Jane Evans
A midwife in mainly community based clinical practice for more than 30 years and independent of the NHS since 1991. Has extensive experience in twins and breech, and is the author of the AIMS booklet, 'Breech Birth: What are my Options?' She has lectured nationally and internationally and runs 'A Day at the Breech" workshops with Mary Cronk and Brenda van der Kooy.

Dawn Gilkes
Senior midwifery lecturer at Oxford Brookes University and a practising midwife, Dawn has a keen interest in practice focussed learning and, along with her colleague Ethel Burns, facilitates modules relating to challenge and complexity in childbirth, which involve learning and assessment through simulation and OSCEs.

Penny Green
Penny has been a midwife for many years working in a variety of settings including large and small hospitals, overseas and, for the last 7 years, in the community in Oxford. She believes in the importance of a good midwife to keep childbirth normal and give new parents an amazing birth experience.

Mavis Kirkham (see Bristol conference)

Sheila Kitzinger MBE
Sheila is the world's foremost birth educator and activist. She is known and respected world wide as a social anthropologist of birth and a leading authority on women's experiences of pregnancy and motherhood. She is the author of more than 23 books, including 'Rediscovering Birth' (Little, Brown 2000) and has been published in 20 languages.

Lesley Page
Visiting Professor of Midwifery at King's College, London; adjunct professor, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Member of the Expert Maternity Group: Changing Childbirth 1993, specialist advisor to the House of Commons sub-committee investigating maternity services (2003). Currently advisor to the King's Fund national enquiry into safety of maternity services in England. A practising midwife in Oxfordshire, her research has focussed on the effects of continuity of carer and evidence based midwifery.

Liz Nightingale
A registered midwife practising independently in Oxfordshire, Liz believes in woman-centred care and prefers to offer continuity of carer throughout the childbearing journey. She works in partnership with women, supporting them to make evidence informed choices about their care. Liz specializes in attending women who plan home and water births, and also enjoys facilitating adult learning groups. She currently leads Aquanatal classes, Active Birth and Making Sense of Birth workshops with Sarah Ifill, her independent midwifery colleague.

Gill Thorn (see Bristol conference)

Mandy Hawke
Mandy has worked with parents as an antenatal teacher for 25 years. Her philosophy for normal birth is that it takes place in a safe and supportive environment for the woman and that the baby is in a good position. For this reason she believes that home birth is the right choice for many women.

Helen Munday
Having observed high tech deliveries during General Nurse training, Helen wanted to give birth in the familiar surroundings of her own home with people she knew and trusted. Her first experience resulted in a gentle transfer to hospital and the safe arrival of her elder son, but she then went on to have two successful home births.

MARY CRONK

Mary trained as a midwife in the 1950s, a time when most births took place at home and it was difficult to get a hospital birth. This changed drastically between the mid 70s to 80s when home births were strongly discouraged and Mary was threatened with disciplinary action by her manager if she booked any women for one. In 1991 Mary reluctantly decided to become an independent midwife in order to offer a more woman-centred approach which she was not able to offer within the NHS.

Mary is held in very high regard by her colleagues and her work with the former UKCC (now the Nursing and Midwifery Council) earned her an MBE. Although semi-retired she continues to work as an expert witness as well as an independent midwife, her practise being mostly home births in the West Sussex area. She also advises on vaginal breech deliveries, twins, water births and VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarean).

PROFESSOR MAVIS KIRKHAM

Mavis has done midwifery research and clinical practice since 1971 and now works occasionally in a rural birth centre and books a few women for home births.

Her current research focuses on midwives’ relationship with their work in the NHS. She is also supervising research projects concerning the childbearing experiences of groups of women who experience social exclusion and vulnerability. All this concerns how women cope with birth and bureaucracy and what are the key factors in their coping.

LYNNE LEYSHON

Lynne is Divisional General Manager for Women, Children and Diagnostics at South Devon Healthcare. She was previously Head of Midwifery and Directorate Manager and was a member of the External working Group of the Maternity Module of the Childrens NSF.

Lynne has a reputation for strong leadership and has experience of strategic and financial management. She introduced team midwifery in Torbay in 1992 which has led to total integration of the midwifery service. The area also has the highest home birth rate in the country, currently 11.7%.

Lynne has also undertaken work exploring the cost effectiveness of integrated midwifery using national reference costing. She will present the ‘Torbay Model’ and share her experience of service re design and implementation, which has in turn raised the home birth rate in South Devon.

PROFESSOR JONATHAN MONTGOMERY

Jonathan is Professor of Health Care Law at the University of Southampton, Chair of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight Strategic Health Authority and Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Clinical Excellence Awards. He is currently a member of the Medical Ethics Committee of the British Medical Association, the Ethics Advisory Group to the Care Records Development Board and a working party on the Ethics of Public Health recently convened by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.

He teaches health care law and ethics to legal and health professionals and has published widely in this field and also on family law. His publications include a textbook, Health Care Law (Oxford University Press, 2nd edition 2003, 3rd in preparation).

He is married to a midwife and has two daughters, one of whom was born at home.

ANDREA ROBERTSON

Andrea has been involved in the birth scene for over 30 years. She is a consultant in childbirth education, an Honorary Fellow of the Australian College of Midwives, an author, birth activist and workshop presenter on the international stage.

She lives in Sydney where she is the Director of Birth International, a Registered Training Organisation offering a range of resources for the support, promotion and protection of midwifery.

GILL THORN

Gill holds an honours degree in Psychology and Sociology (1966) and has over 30 years experience in education for parenthood. Two of her three children were born at home. More recently, she was present at the home births of each of her four grandchildren in Bristol.

After the birth of her second daughter she trained with the National Childbirth Trust, becoming an independent antenatal teacher in the early 1980’s. In 1986 she helped start a voluntary group to support home birth. This became Chichester Home Birth, organisers of today's conference.

Gill runs a range of weekly classes, gives occasional lectures and has contributed numerous articles to national magazines in the UK and abroad. Her books include Pregnancy and Birth (Hamlyn), Not Too Late: Having a Baby After 35 (Bantam), Have The Birth You Want (Hodder and Stoughton) and Healthy Pregnancy (Hamlyn).