Revisiting a social model for antenatal and postnatal care

It was nearly a decade ago that Mary Newburn and I wrote two papers on the application of a social model to the different phases of maternity care (Walsh and Newburn, 2002a; 2002b). Since then, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has published national guidelines in all three areas of antenatal, intra-partum and postnatal care. With the advent of new approaches to delivering antenatal and postnatal care, it is timely to revisit both these areas to assess how much current mainstream provision reflects a social model.