BaBi Doncaster
Welcome to Doncaster!
Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of Yorkshire’s leading acute trusts, hosting three main hospital sites (Doncaster Royal Infirmary, Bassetlaw Hospital Worksop, Montagu Mexborough). The Trust serves a culturally diverse population of more than 420,000 across South Yorkshire, North Nottinghamshire and the surrounding areas.
Maternity services are provided at Doncaster Royal Infirmary and Bassetlaw Hospital in Worksop, however, during the first phase of BaBi-D data will only be collected from Doncaster Royal Infirmary.
Born and Bred in Doncaster (BaBi-D)
The Born and Bred in Doncaster (BaBi-D) research programme aims to help improve the health and wellbeing of children and families across Doncaster, with this programme wmaintaining a strong focus on health inequalities and inclusion. The data provided from this cohort study will help the partnership in gaining a better understanding of what local families want and need from healthcare services across the borough, ensuring locally commissioned services are inclusive, with consideration of additional research for further understanding and improvement for our local population.
Who is involved in BaBi Doncaster?
Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals (DBTH), as the lead organisation hosting the Principal Investigator, will work in partnership with RDASH, Doncaster Council and Primary Care to deliver this large research programme. Expert researcher support and funding will be provided by our partner universities – the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University – to assist in the research study. BaBi-D is aligned to DBTH’s corporate strategy and is part of a larger cohort study which includes Bradford, Leeds, and Wakefield.
Our Objectives
To understand and improve the health and wellbeing of local children and families across Doncaster
To work collaboratively with partners and collect local data to ensure future research resources for future generations
To link data across multiple services and wider providers
To ensure all our midwives are trained and encouraged to promote BaBi-D to local families and to include BaBi-D midwife data collection training to all newly qualified midwives
For BaBi-D to lead by example and encourage other trusts to be a part of the larger Born In Bradford Programme, BiB4All
To ensure locally commissioned services are inclusive and incorporate values from the health inequalities, ethnicity, and deprivation strategy
Check out the BaBi Wakefield website here: www.dbth.nhs.uk/babi-d
Meet our Principal Investigator: Lois Mellor
Lois Mellor is Director of Midwifery at Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Lois qualified as a registered nurse in 1991 in London and as a registered midwife in 1994 in Cheltenham. Lois has had a varied career working in various parts of the UK as a midwife, practice nurse, specialist midwife and Matron.
Lois is passionate about midwifery and has spent a significant part of her career in midwife-led units in rural England and Scotland. During her time in Scotland, Lois also worked as a child development lecturer in a college as part of a project to support single mothers back into employment.
Lois has a keen interested in governance and risk, and was appointed as the first governance midwife in the Yorkshire region in 2005. She continued in this role until 2014 when she was appointed as Intrapartum Matron at Calderdale and Huddersfield. Lois spent 5 years leading an excellent team to make improvements in services for pregnant people and their families. She moved to DBTH in 2019, initially as Head of Midwifery, and then as Director of Midwifery in 2020. Lois is passionate about ensuring that pregnant people and their families have the best service possible. She is proud to lead a team who are invested in making the maternity service at DBTH the best and believes this project to be a cornerstone of this.
