The International Day of the Midwife 2026, with its theme around the need for “A Million More Midwives” globally, invites us to look forward, but also to look back. I'm currently rewatching BBC's Call the Midwife, based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth. Whilst few midwives today cycle to visit families, and rarely work alongside religious sisters, many of the issues encountered in 1960s Poplar feel familiar: difficulties in access to contraception and changes to abortion legislation, the increasing medicalisation of pregnancy and birth, and the profound impact of national policy on individual lives.

One of the most poignant contrasts between then and now is the visibility and value of midwives in the community. In Call the Midwife, midwives are trusted, known figures, embedded in the daily lives of women and families. They walk (or cycle) the streets, knock on doors, and provide care that extends far beyond birth. Their work is preventative, relational and empowering, addressing social need as much as physical health.

Community services are frequently the first to be scaled back, for example, the suspension of home birth services or reliance on community midwives to cover hospital services. This is despite strong evidence that locally delivered services improve outcomes, reduce inequalities and enhance women's experiences.

Safe staffing is central to this picture and to the theme of this year's International Day of the Midwife. Across the UK, maternity services remain chronically short staffed, placing women, babies and staff under unsustainable pressure. At the same time, newly qualified midwives struggle to secure substantive posts, caught in recruitment freezes or limited by short term funding decisions. This painful paradox of unsafe and understaffed services sitting alongside unemployed or under employed graduates speaks to a failure in workforce planning.

For nurses and midwives, this creates moral distress that mirrors the dilemmas portrayed in Call the Midwife. Professionals want to offer safe, compassionate, individualised care, yet find themselves firefighting, stretched too thin to practise in line with their values. Newly qualified staff, full of commitment and fresh learning, are denied opportunities to grow within supportive teams, while experienced colleagues shoulder ever heavier workloads.

Transforming our maternity services to be safe for both families and midwives must mean more than headlines or promises. It must mean safe staffing in real terms: funded posts, protected learning time, proper supervision and realistic workloads. It must mean retaining the workforce we already have, valuing experience, and enabling newly qualified midwives to enter employment confident they can practise safely and sustainably.

Crucially, it must also mean embedding midwives at the heart of their communities. Midwifery and nursing are at their more effective when they empower women, pregnant people and families: support informed choices, advocate within complex systems, and recognise the social context of health. When services are designed around relationships rather than throughput, choice becomes meaningful rather than simply theoretical.

The midwives of the 1960s navigated change with courage and compassion, often pushing quietly against the boundaries of policy and societal expectation. As we mark this year's International Day of the Midwife, 60 years later, their legacy challenges us to do the same.

A million more midwives cannot be a distant workforce ambition, it is a call to rebuild safe staffing, restore community centred care, and ensure that every woman and family is supported by a midwife who has the time, trust and authority to truly make a difference.

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