MERAS

The Midwifery Employee Representation and Advisory Service (MERAS) provides services to employed midwives who predominately provide core midwifery services. MERAS was established in 2002 with the vision to negotiate a national employee collective agreement specific to midwifery, that would enhance and protect midwifery practice within District Health Board (DHB) maternity settings.

The MMPO

The Midwifery and Maternity Providers Organisation (MMPO) was set up in 1995 and provides a practice management system for individual midwives working with a case-loading model of care. The MMPO provides the mechanism for midwives to access payment from the state maternity funding. The MMPO’s practice management system is centred on a standardised set of notes that, as well as offering a a professional record of maternity care for the midwife and the woman, provides a national data collection tool for maternity outcomes.

Professional Structure

The College, the MMPO and MERAS are all governed and operate separately from each other. However, each aspect of this professional structure is linked to the collective vision for midwifery and maternity services through membership of the College. This ensures that individual midwives meet the collective standards of the profession, protecting the standard of care that the public can expect from a midwife and preventing the fragmentation of midwifery into a number of separate organisations, each with different standards.