PARENTING classes could be scrapped and an ante-natal ward closed at weekends as part of moves to keep six midwives at the Royal Sussex County

Hospital, Brighton.

The changes, along with plans to give GPs more responsibility for ante-natal care by sharing it with community midwives, are being debated by health planners this week.

Brighton Health Care NHS Trust, which runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital, in Brighton, needs to find £130,000 annually to keep the six midwives, which were employed last year at a time of need but before their funding was finalised.

Funding has been agreed until April but a review team made up of representatives from Brighton and Hove and Ouse Valley primary care groups, the trust, the National Childbirth Trust and midwives has been debating how services could be changed to free cash to keep the midwives when the financial year ends.

The team has stressed it wants to keep all six midwives - an option which has not been ruled out. But it has outlined the proposals around parenting classes and ante-natal care as changes which would cause least disruption for families.

Brighton and Hove PCG vice chairman Dr Susie Rockwell, a Portslade GP who has been involved with the review team, said parenting support would still be offered. But often women who could benefit from classes most - those in disadvantaged areas -used them least and scrapping them could open up better ways of conveying information.

But she said problems could arise through partial closure of the ante-natal ward at the Royal Sussex, which helps hundreds of women a year with difficult pregnancies and already has to turn away mums-to-be.

She said: "It wouldn't be a very happy situation and would inevitably lower staff morale as well as patient care."

PCG chief executive Gary Needle stressed the possible changes were simply options at this stage and final decisions would depend on 2000/2001 budgets, Ouse Valley PCG's discussions and public consultation.

He said: "There are a whole range of competing pressures for resources for next year. This is one of them."

The Royal Sussex has faced such demand for its resources in the past it has had to close a ward and turn women in labour away because it was too busy.

A spokesman for the trust said if the ante-natal ward did have to eventually close at weekends, women with serious pre-birth problems would be moved to the hospital's main maternity unit.

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