Abstract

Maternity care has been the subject of much review in recent years with the Winterton Report (DoH, 1992) and 'Changing Childbirth' (DoH, 1993) stating that: "continuity of carer is the fundamental principle underpinning woman centred care" (DoH, 1993). Five years on from 'Changing Childbirth' many of the resources set aside for funding innovations in practice have been withdrawn. The recent White Paper, 'The new NHS Modern and Dependable' (DoH, 1998) sets up new challenges for midwives. Team midwifery was introduced throughout much of the country, as a means of providing continuity of care and carer through a team based approach (Flint, 1993). One of the problems with teams arises when there are too many midwives in the team for women to get to know (Ball et al, 1993). Caseload management has been recognised as a way of overcoming this problem and now seems to be the acknowledged way forward when setting up continuity of care schemes (Page, 1995; Hall, 1996).