Ensuring that women make informed decisions about where they wish to give birth is an increasingly recognised aspect of the midwife’s role.
Findings of this PhD study suggest that a woman’s ability to make an informed decision about the option of planned home birth depends on her access to home birth social capital, beliefs about her ability to birth safely, and the receipt of a passive or active offer of planned home birth from her midwife. Where a passive offer is received, an uniformed decision may be made if a woman’s individual social circumstances do not compensate for this.
The two-stage Active Offer of Planned Home Birth (AOPHB), consisting of ‘Creating the conditions’ and ‘Positive reinforcement’ stages, provides a flexible tool that has the potential for developing and supporting midwives to further understand, and effectively facilitate, women’s birth place decision-making in relation to planned home birth.