Latest news with #MaternityAction
The Independent
16-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
‘I had to borrow money from friends and family during my maternity leave – I felt ashamed and humiliated'
New mothers have been left feeling 'ashamed and humiliated' after having to borrow thousands of pounds in order to finance their maternity leave. Campaigners are warning that at just £187.18 a week, statutory maternity pay and maternity allowance are pushing mothers into poverty. New mothers have reported going without meals and spiralling into debt because of low maternity pay, as a survey by Maternity Action found over half had resorted to credit cards, loans or borrowing from family to finance their leave. One in four of the 1,176 pregnant women and new mothers surveyed said they had borrowed between £2,000 to £4,000, whilst 23 per cent said they had borrowed more than £4,000. Laura, 39, found herself having to borrow £6,000 from her family to help pay her bills and for food after having her second child. The charity director, who did not want to include her second name, told The Independent how she was forced to return to work early as she could no longer afford to provide for her children on her maternity pay. 'By about five months we were really starting to feel the pinch so I ended up going back to work full time after seven months,' she said. 'I don't think I was really emotionally ready to do that. It was difficult for me and it was difficult for my baby. 'I was still breastfeeding so I was going into work with engorged breasts and I'm a manager so I didn't want to be sneaking off and expressing milk halfway through a meeting. There was that pressure and anxiety and I was really tired as I wasn't sleeping properly.' She described having to shop more carefully and said almost every new mother she met had had to borrow money from elsewhere. 'There's a certain amount of shame and humiliation. I've been working for 20 years and my job is not paid badly, but I'm now forced into a position where I actually am in poverty and that carries shame,' she said. 'There's just this embarrassment of having to essentially admit you're not succeeding at something. It feels like you're failing to be able to provide. 'When you're a mum it's already a very emotionally difficult time, so psychologically it damages people's confidence which means you're wellbeing is compromised which can damage your baby.' The allowance is worth just 44 per cent of the standard weekly National Living Wage and less than a third of women's full time average earnings. Maternity Action say this means that an average earning new mother could lose more than £17,000 over nine month's leave. In fact, the report found that 57 per cent had cut their maternity leave short, or are planning to, because they can't afford it. 'Our system of maternity leave is vastly outdated, with an expectation that a mother will be supported by another higher breadwinner, and dangerously out of touch with today's reality that women are often the main or higher earner in the household,' Ali Fiddy, director at Maternity Action, said. 'Our critically low level of maternity pay is pushing pregnant women and new mothers into debt and poverty with implications for the Government's pledges for closing the gender pay gap, making work pay for women, tackling child poverty and improving maternal and infant health.' Half of those surveyed also said they had to buy less healthy food due to high costs, as 38 per cent said they ate smaller meals or skipped meals entirely for cost reasons. A quarter went without food themselves to priorities feeding their children and the majority said they had to reduce the number of hours they put the heating on. Ms Fiddy added: 'If it wants to deliver its pledges on these issues, the government must consider the provision of more adequate maternity pay as part of its forthcoming review of Shared Parental Leave. 'Long-term, the chancellor should implement a programme of phased investment that delivers parity between maternity payments and the standard weekly National Living Wage. 'In the shorter-term the government should aim to at least restore payments to their 2012 pre-austerity level of around two-thirds of the National Living Wage, which financial modelling has shown is achievable.'
The Guardian
13-04-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Asylum seeker billed £10,000 for NHS maternity care ‘could only afford penny a month'
A destitute asylum seeker who was billed more than £10,000 for having a baby could afford to pay just a penny a month, leading to calls for an urgent review of NHS maternity charging for migrants. Kim, 34, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, was invoiced and then contacted by a debt collection agency after having an emergency caesarean section. Asylum seekers, who receive around £7 a day per person for food, clothing, communication and toiletries, with small 'healthy food' top-ups for mothers of young children, are exempt from charges under the NHS cost recovery programme. The scheme was first introduced by a Conservative government 10 years ago this month, targeting overseas visitors and migrants. However, many women entitled to free NHS maternity care are being wrongly charged, pregnancy charity Maternity Action said. Kim's case was complicated by changes in her migration status. She first claimed asylum in the UK in 2017 after a crackdown on government critics in Zimbabwe, her country of birth, but was refused. In 2021 she became pregnant and made a fresh asylum application, having struggled to do so earlier, she said, because of the pandemic. After the birth of her daughter in March 2022, when she had an active asylum claim and should have been exempt, Kim was invoiced for maternity care by Leeds teaching hospitals NHS trust (LTHT) for £10,703.23. The trust later told a debt collection agency that she owed an additional £3,450 relating to previous inpatient care for mobility problems that occurred after her first asylum application had been refused. Kim, supported by the early parenthood charity National Childbirth Trust (NCT), wrote to LTHT saying: 'I am forbidden by law from working and do not have a bank account. 'I would like to propose repayment of £0.01p a month. I am embarrassed that I cannot offer greater contribution … even this will be a stretch. A requirement to pay more than this will put me under significant pressure to obtain money unlawfully.' LTHT has now apologised to Kim 'for any distress caused', confirming they 'cancelled' the invoices once they received 'updated information demonstrating her eligibility'. The trust's chief medical officer, Magnus Harrison, added: 'Where a patient has accrued charges for NHS treatment and their eligibility later changes, previous charges still apply. If a patient is deemed destitute or at risk of imminent destitution then the trust may choose not to pursue the debt for the time being.' It is recommended in the UK that pregnant women have an initial antenatal appointment before 10 weeks, but fear of charges meant Kim did not seek antenatal care until four months, encouraged by NCT. 'The danger is that incorrect implementation of the rules deters women from seeking appropriate antenatal and postnatal care,' Judith Dennis, Maternity Action's head of policy, said. 'This has serious implications for maternity safety (and) the health of women and babies.' Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Anna Miller, Doctors of the World's head of policy, said charging migrants meant babies whose parents had been here for years were 'born into debt', with no evidence of the cost-effectiveness of a policy that led to 'people avoiding treatment' until crisis. Describing the impact of being charged, Kim said: 'I really felt depressed … where am I going to get this money? I was still a new mum, breastfeeding as well … you're trying to heal from a caesarean and then there's a bill, there's a small child as well.' Kim remains in asylum accommodation, where residents have complained of mould and cockroaches, awaiting a decision on her claim and attending college, hoping to study nursing. The NCT is calling for the impact of maternity charging to be examined and for access to interpreters and 'secure housing' for pregnant women who are migrants. The NCT head of programmes, Helen Lloyd, said: 'The threat of NHS charging creates a hostile environment for pregnant women with unclear immigration status.' A Home Office spokesperson said: 'Asylum accommodation is required to meet strict standards, and regular inspections are conducted to ensure these are maintained. 'The NHS is a residency based system and it is only right that those who are not lawfully settled here, or exempt from charge, should contribute to the cost of their care.'
The Independent
06-04-2025
- Business
- The Independent
‘The financial strain of having a baby left me suicidal – it's time for mothers to be fairly compensated'
'Suddenly I felt like everything I'd ever worked for had crashed around me, suddenly I was losing everything,' says Grace Carter. 'The idea of losing my business felt like losing a baby. 'I really, really struggled.' After trying for years to have a second child, the 33-year-old was overjoyed when she gave birth to her daughter in November 2023. However, she tells the Independent she was left feeling suicidal as a result of the financial strain of having a baby and is still in a huge amount of debt after trying to keep her business as well as her young family afloat. Ms Carter, from Colchester, has since joined calls for maternity pay to match National Living Wage, and is demanding that the 'economic contribution of mothers is appropriately recognised and compensated'. She said she received Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP), which works out at the equivalent of a full-time worker on a 37.5 hour week earning around £4.99 per hour after the first six weeks of maternity leave. This is roughly just 41 per cent of the 2025 National Living Wage (NLW) of £12.21 per hour, which has been set out to ensure a basic standard of living. Ms Carter – who is the founder of The Metamorphose Group, a collective of purpose-driven brands aimed at changing the lives of women and girls, which she has been building over eight years – said the combined effects of her being out of work, as the head of her company, and the discrimination she faced led to her business' yearly turnover shrinking to almost half, from an average of £600,000 to £350,000 that year, and she was forced to borrow £140,000. The mother-of-two has since founded the End Parenting Poverty campaign and has launched a petition calling on the government to raise statutory maternity and paternity pay to match the NLW. Ms Carter said: 'At the bare minimum, if the government is mandating that you should not be working for less than the NLW as it's not sustainable or ethical, then we cannot suggest people having children live off half of that.' The government said new mothers are entitled to 52 weeks of leave and 39 weeks of SMP, with the rate increasing from £184.03 to £187.18 per week from April, while it is also set to carry out a review of wider statutory parental leave. Three in five expectant and new mothers report money worries impacting their health, and almost a quarter are going without food to make sure they can feed their families, according to a survey of more than 1,000 conducted by Maternity Action this month. The charity's head of policy Judith Dennis said: 'Sadly Grace Carter is not alone in her experience of suffering financial shock on maternity pay... we support Grace's call for parity between the National Living Wage and maternity pay, a call we made on all the political parties before the general election.' Katie Guild, co-founder of Nugget Savings, a company focused on transforming parental leave pay, said: 'We must remember that having a baby is incredibly productive for society. We are raising the future generation of taxpayers, customers and workers. Without it, our economic future looks stark, which is why so many governments are concerned about the plummeting birth rates. 'The motherhood penalty makes up 80 per cent of the gender pay gap, and this begins with maternity pay. It is high time the economic contribution of mothers is appropriately recognised and compensated. This starts by increasing government maternity pay to the national minimum wage.' Ms Carter said she suffered a traumatic miscarriage in January 2022, during which she haemorrhaged and had to be resuscitated, leaving her with depression and complex PTSD. But she said she had to go back to work within three days of leaving hospital, against her doctor's advice, due to the lack of financial support available for her as a female business owner. Following that miscarriage, she said her pregnancy with her second daughter was high-stress and she was left needing a blood transfusion after a caesarean section. It was when she was recovering in hospital that she said her phone started notifying her about issue after issue within her company. 'I had no choice – if I didn't work, then the business was going to go under,' Ms Carter said. 'I've worked too hard, over too many years, and made too many sacrifices for that to happen. I was also really conscious that my staff and suppliers were reliant on me for their mortgages and providing for their families.' But she said she was nervous about doing so, because in order to be eligible for the little maternity pay she was to receive, legally she was not allowed to work more than 10 'keeping in touch' days. It again highlighted the unique challenges she said female entrepeneurs having children face, being self-employed and responsible for their businesses. She said she ended up doing as much as was needed to prevent her company from going under, but no more, yet the business still suffered significantly as a result. It was following this that her mental health really began to suffer, which she blames on the financial pressures she was under. Ms Carter, who recently gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee on this issue, said: 'We're working in a world built for and by men. No one is talking about having a baby and the impact of having a baby on a business. A year on, it's still not getting onto government agendas. I thought I've had enough of this, I'm going to start campaigning for change.' A government spokesperson said: 'The law is clear – no one should face discrimination because they are pregnant or are taking parental leave. Statutory Maternity Pay and Maternity Allowance are uprated each year and are only one element of support available for pregnant women and new mothers, who may also be eligible for Universal Credit or Child Benefit. 'As we fix the foundations of the economy, we're uprating benefits and supporting 700,000 of the poorest families by making changes to Universal Credit deductions to help low-income households and make everyone better off.' If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@ or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988, or visit to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to to find a helpline near you
