top of page

Best Birth Finder

Best Birth Finder (BBF) is a free service developed by MCA that:

  • captures reviews from women of their birth experiences in Australia

  • provides a draft feedback email (based on the review submitted) that women can then send to their birth service

  • allows women to search reviews to find their best birth (visual fully featured map of Australia still in development)

Search reviews

Submit reviews

birthspoke4_edited_edited.webp
unsplash-GpfRAzKjngw_edited_edited.webp

How does your local birth service rate? Discover other birth options near you using our interactive map.

Help improve this free service.
Share your birth experience AND you'll receive a draft feedback email you can send to your birth service.

Why did we create Best Birth Finder?

MCA has been campaigning for more than 20 years against the steady rise in birth intervention rates. However, in the same period there has been no improvement in stillbirth rates, and suicide and iatrogenic harm are the leading causes of maternal death.* Our maternity care system is not improving outcomes for mothers and babies, nor does it attempt to provide women with information about the full suite of birth choices available to them. Yet, over the last two decades, our federal government has held inquiries and published strategic plans to improve maternity outcomes.  It is a worthwhile, evidence-based document, but state governments are not mandated to implement it, hence the lack of change. And until BBF, there has been no system for capturing data that relates to these Strategic Directions. This is our attempt to bring greater visibility to women's outcomes and how they measure up to the government's goals for improving maternity care. However, our main wish for BBF is that it helps women around Australia learn more about birth services in their region so they can make the best choice for their care.

How does Best Birth Finder work?

BBF is free, takes about 10 minutes to complete and relates to births in Australia only. Births in hospital, or at home (or elsewhere) and with or without a registered birth attendant can be entered into BBF. Enter data for each field in order, as some fields will be displayed or hidden depending on your choices selected in previous fields. We do NOT publish clinician names in BBF, so please do not include clinician names in your reviews. Your name and email address will NOT be published with your review. After you click Submit, you'll be emailed a copy of your review. You can use your review as a basis for feedback for your birth service. We will then check your review before publishing it to ensure it does not contain any clinician names. This generally takes 24-48 hours, as we are volunteers, but in the mean time you can read published reviews.

How will Best Birth Finder help improve birth in Australia?

The data​ you enter (anonymised, i.e., without your name/email address) will play an important role in helping us advocate for better birth services for the mothers and babies of Australia. ​ MCA has been Australia's premier maternity service advocacy organisation for over 30 years. As volunteers and mothers, we advocate at the coalface of federal and state government to bring about our goal of "every woman, every choice". ​ Unfortunately, in spite of our efforts, we fail to see our maternity services give women access to the evidence-based, compassionate care they need and deserve. What goes unreported goes unnoticed. Birth trauma rates and medical interventions are rising steeply, yet we see no improvement in stillbirth or PND rates. Who is benefitting from this system as it stands? Certainly not mothers and babies. ​ One of our biggest challenges as maternity service advocates is the lack of organised data from the hundreds of women we hear from every year. Government and birth services take little notice of the rafts of scientific evidence we continue to present, so the women's stories we share are largely ignored as well. ​ Something has to change. This is where your outcomes and experiences (all anonymised of course) will make a difference. We also hope that by providing an easy way for you to send your feedback, health services will finally see the real impact they are having on the women and babies they serve. As long as you can walk out their doors, they see their job as done and as they do not follow up with women, they are unaware of the lasting impact they may have had.

Why does BBF compile a draft feedback email for me?

After you submit a review in BBF, you will receive an email copy of all the data you entered PLUS a draft feedback email to send to your birth service, along with relevant email contacts.* Our intention is to make it easier for women to send feedback - the good and the bad - to their birth service. Care providers rely on our feedback to design and build better services so your feedback will make a difference. Health services are in fact required by Australian Safety and Quality in Healthcare standards to work with their local communities to co-design their services. (See Standard 2: Partnering with Consumers.) While health services do have channels for receiving feedback from their community, they are not always easy to find. Combine that with the challenges of new motherhood, and providing feedback about a birth can be a daunting task. But without this vital feedback, birth services are left to operate the way they always have. It is only by coming together and making our voices heard that change is possible - to ensure better care for the mothers and babies of Australia. * If you entered "Self-managed" model of care and "Home without a registered care provider" place of birth, you will only receive a copy of all data you entered without the draft feedback email.

bottom of page