News and Stories

Our Bringing Home Birth Project ended in June, having opened the doors to future growth of Indigenous midwifery in Canada. NACM’s Co‑Chairs are satisfied that the project took meaningful steps towards restoring birth to Indigenous communities.

“We were able to visit more communities than had been originally envisioned by the project and made some good connections in those communities. We appreciate the hard work of Community Programs Lead, Evelyn George, who did an excellent job of positioning NACM as the voice of Indigenous midwifery in Canada.”

— Melissa Brown, Co‑Chair

Few Indigenous families in Canada have access to culturally safe midwifery care near their home communities. Transforming the experience of birth is central to intergenerational healing for Indigenous families. The project was designed to address the lack of access to Indigenous midwives.

Throughout the one-year project, 12 Indigenous midwives and Indigenous student midwives visited a total of 10 communities to deliver health education workshops, advocacy meetings or both. Another 12 Indigenous midwives and other health professionals developed and delivered 8 webinars on topics that were attended by a total of 95 persons. Fifteen midwives participated in a pilot mentorship program.

The project also enabled NACM to host a feast for 83 local and visiting Indigenous midwives during the ICM Congress in June 2017, and allowed us to meet with the federal ministries of Health and Indigenous Services, national Aboriginal Organizations, educational organizations and provincial and territorial midwifery associations.

Bringing Birth Home was funded by Save the Children Canada (SCC) and represented the second year of an ongoing partnership between SCC and NACM.

NACM’s vision for education is that where there are services there will be education. This vision inspired NACM to begin to articulate the core competencies of Indigenous midwifery, as a key component in NACM’s aim to increase the pathways to education, decolonize training experiences, remove funding barriers to midwifery practice, and support retention.

This framework will serve as a national occupational standard to support further development of critical human resources, educational resources and career planning tools. The Core Competencies Project is being undertaken in partnership with Save the Children Canada (SCC) and is funded with support from Johnson & Johnson.

In July 2018 NACM started a consultation process with Indigenous midwives to identify key competencies for the development of a National Indigenous Midwifery Competency Framework. Following this, NACM conducted a national Indigenous midwifery occupational survey. Through this survey, NACM aims to understand the size and profile of the Indigenous midwifery sector, expected attrition and anticipated changes in the employment patterns in order to meet the needs of the Indigenous community.

Following the survey, a group of NACM members from across the country came together in Toronto for a core competencies workshop. Indigenous midwives present at the workshop represented different geographic regions, registered and exemption midwives, First Nations, Inuit and Metis midwives, and different levels of experience. Facilitated by the Competencies Group, the midwives spent two days mapping out the unique roles of Indigenous midwives and the aspects of care that we provide. Together the midwives developed a set of core competencies for Indigenous midwifery in Canada. The next step of this project will be to have these core competencies reviewed by the wider NACM membership, with the end goal of a set of core competencies of Indigenous midwives developed and validated by Indigenous midwives.

Finally, NACM is undertaking a public engagement strategy with government, midwifery associations, and midwifery education programs and stakeholders in Canada. The work on this project will continue until June 2019. NACM member Cheryllee Bourgeois is working as the Project Lead to support the development of the Framework and NACM member Evelyn George is working as the Partnership Development Coordinator to support the public engagement strategy, supported by the NACM SCC committee.