Lead midwives for education (LMEs) play a vital role in overseeing the quality of midwifery education to protect the public, improve standards of maternity care and develop midwives of the future.

The central role of midwives is to support women through pregnancy, labour, birth and the postnatal period. This includes ensuring that women are able to make informed choices about their care and advocating for those choices on behalf of women. However, the well-documented pressures on maternity services, and the staff that work within them, often mean that support and advocacy is not at the level the midwifery community – and women and families – want and need.

Midwives support around 635,000 births each year in the UK. They are the lead professionals for most pregnancies and births providing expert care that keeps women and babies safe through pregnancy, birth and early weeks of life and work closely with other health professionals when specialist care is needed.