Reducing Black maternal health inequalities: building health, wellbeing and real solutions together

News!! We launched up to £1.5m of funding for multiyear grants of up to three years (2026 – 2029) that will fund projects seeking to improve experiences and outcomes for Black mothers, birthing people, and their babies.

Organisations are invited to submit proposals against eleven solution areas that were generated at workshop held in Brixton in June, which were then scored and prioritised by the programme’s Expert Reference Group, which includes Experts by Experience, Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise leaders, academics and NHS clinicians and commissioners.

The Expression of Interest (EOI) is open until 10 January 2026 and applicants can submit their proposals through the funding website. JRNY Consulting are leading the delivery of the grant-making process on behalf of the funding partners. Applications are invited from:

• Voluntary, community, social enterprise (VCSE) organisations or community interest companies (CIC) based in or serving south east London
• Partnerships or consortia, including NHS providers and local authorities and local care partnerships where a community organisation is the lead partner.
• Organisations that demonstrate a commitment to anti-racism, trauma-informed practice, and centring the voices of Black mothers and birthing people.

For more information, please contact Noa@jrnyconsulting.com or you can also sign-up via the funding page to attend an online community briefing on 2 December from 10 -11:30am - where you can ask questions about the grant making process.

How you can get involved?

• Call for lived experience consultants to support our programme

We are looking to recruit a number of lived experience consultants to support the newly launched grant making process through which we will allocate £1.5m of funding for projects running up to three years (see above item). The role is compensated.

Lived experience consultants will complement the lived experience expertise in our Expert Reference Group (ERG), who have co-designed all stages of the programme to date, support us to rigorously and fairly assess grant-making applications, and decide which applications to take forward for funding. The role will include:

• shortlisting applications with reference to criteria co-developed with our Expert Reference Group
• doing on-site visits as part of assessment panels to see the work of applicant organisations in action
• attending final allocation meetings with our ERG and other key stakeholders to collectively decide how to allocate the total funding pot.

Lived experience consultants should meet the following criteria:

• Black mothers and birthing people and/or fathers and wider family networks who have experience of south east London’s maternity and neonatal services, including pre-birth/pre-conception services
• Black residents of south east London with an interest in health inequities and maternal and neonatal health

The work will take place in January - March 2026. The process is led by our learning partner, JRNY Consulting, who will provide training and support as needed to fulfil the role successfully. If you are interested in this role, please email noa@jrnyconsulting.com with a brief overview of why you are interested in the work and what you would bring to it.

• If you would like to be kept informed about project developments and future opportunities to be involved please sign up here and we will add you to our mailing list.

Background

While the UK remains one of the safest places in the world to give birth, Black women and birthing people experience health inequalities in maternity and neonatal services. Data shows that Black women and birthing people are more likely to die in childbirth, more likely to have a traumatic birth, and report poorer experiences of maternity and neonatal care.

NHS South East London and Impact on Urban Health have formed a partnership that seeks to work with communities to re-build trust and find and fund solutions to these inequalities. We will bring together Black mothers and birthing people with maternity and neonatal services in South East London to collectively decide on and deliver fully funded pilot interventions.

Black Maternal Health Expert Reference Group

This work is guided by a South East London Black Maternal Health Expert Reference Group made up of local Black mothers and birthing people, leaders of community organisations, and clinicians and service managers from the NHS. Membership of the Group includes representatives from The Motherhood Group, 5 X MORE, Southwark Maternity Voices Partnership, Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Lewisham & Greenwich Trust, South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and King’s College London.

How we are listening to Black mothers and birthing people?

Our early conversations with Black mothers and other experts have revealed that many feel that a lot of listening has already been done and that there is extensive data, insight and other evidence collected to diagnose the problems Black women and birthing people and their babies are experiencing. The people we engaged were now keen to see action and funding to translate this knowledge into meaningful, positive change.

For this reason, we started our project with a solutions-focused workshop that brought together Black mothers and birthing people with NHS staff to collectively decide on solutions that will then be further developed and allocated funding through our Black Maternal Health Expert Reference Group. Solutions could include some of the great working already happening in our communities, or completely new innovations.

The first Reducing Black Maternal Health Inequalities workshop took place on 19th June 2025, at the Liberation Centre in Brixton. We will shortly be updating this page with the outputs from the workshop, which in turn will shape the commissioning by our Expert Reference Group of a series of projects seeking to reducing Black women's and birthing people's maternal health inequalities.

Facilitated by JRNY Consulting and Black Mothers Matter, the event aimed to co-design real solutions to the healthcare inequalities Black mothers and birthing people face in maternity and neonatal care. Several of these ideas will be funded by the ICB and Impact on Urban Health’s Partnership, with a focus on community-led delivery.

The facilitators adopted a compassionate approach and were supported by a local artistic facilitator Moi Tu, helping participants to feel safe and generate a good number of relevant solutions across all stages of the maternity and neonatal journey. Watch this short video to learn more about our workshop.

You can read a briefing document providing an overview of the workshop and solutions-design phase of this programme of work. It may be of particular interest to individuals and organisations with an interest in applying for funding to deliver the work.