Guidance
This guideline covers antenatal care for pregnant women with complex social factors (alcohol or drug misuse, recent migrant or asylum seeker status, difficulty reading or speaking English, aged under 20, domestic abuse). It offers advice on improving access to care, maintaining contact with antenatal carers, and additional information and support for these women.
NICE has also produced a guideline on the care that should be offered to all women during pregnancy.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on improving access to care for:
- pregnant women who misuse alcohol or drugs
- pregnant women who are recent migrants, asylum seekers or who have difficulty reading or speaking English
- young pregnant women aged under 20
- pregnant women who experience domestic abuse
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners and providers
- Pregnant women who need additional support to use antenatal services, their families and carers
Is this guideline up to date?
We checked this guideline in February 2014. We identified no major studies that will affect the recommendations in the next 3 to 5 years.
Next review: February 2019
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or service users. The application of the recommendations in this guideline is not mandatory and the guideline does not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
Local commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients or service users wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.