Recent speakers
Speakers at our 25 Year Celebration (July 2011)
Cathy Warwick CBE is General Secretary of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), one of the world's oldest and largest midwifery organisations, representing the majority of the UK’s midwives.Cathy began her career by gaining a nursing degree at Edinburgh University in 1975. She then completed the one year midwifery course at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in London in 1976, and worked as a midwife across a variety of clinical settings in hospitals and in the community. She has held a number of senior posts in midwifery education and in the NHS managing midwifery and nursing services. Prior to joining the RCM she was Director of Midwifery and General Manager for Women & Children’s Services at King College Hospital in London. She has an MSc in Social Policy, an Advanced Diploma in Midwifery (ADM) and a Post Graduate Certificate in Education of Adults.
Her work has led to invitations to sit on many national maternity policy committees, and she has been Chair of the Midwifery Committee at the Nursing and Midwifery Council, and Chair of the maternity working group contributing to the Darzi report, Healthcare for London.
Cathy has also written and published widely on midwifery issues and lectures and speaks nationally and internationally. She was awarded a visiting professorship by King’s College, London in 2004, She received a CBE for Services to Healthcare in 2006, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from St George’s and Kingston University, London in 2007.
Annie has been an independent midwife for over twelve years. She has four children and their births (2 vaginal breech and 3 homebirths) were the catalyst for her change of career from social worker to midwife. She is passionate about the importance of supporting and enabling women to have real choice about how they experience childbirth – even when this is challenging for the health professionals involved. Annie has been active for many years in the politics of childbirth and is determined to see policy and rhetoric transformed into genuine change at grassroots level.
Annie is currently a Board member of Independent Midwives UK. She is committed to implementing IM UK’s vision to integrate their alternative, sustainable and safe model of caseload midwifery care into an accessible option for all women who choose it, free at the point of delivery. As a ‘not for profit’ social enterprise IM UK is a long way from big business looking to cherry pick from the NHS for shareholders gain. Its mission is to offer women and midwives genuine continuity and choice; to broaden provision at a local level and to provide a responsive, cost effective, high quality service for all.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).