Neighbourhood Midwives Board

Charlotte Cool: Non-executive Director and Chair

Charlotte is Head of Public Affairs for the John Lewis Partnership and oversees its relationships with Government and opinion formers. Her interest in the mutual sector began with a sabbatical in 1995 to the National Federation of Thrift and Credit Cooperatives in Sri Lanka. Before joining JLP, Charlotte was Executive Director of the Commercial Broadcasters Association and she also held senior public policy and communications roles within Viacom plc, the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television and the UK Film Council. Charlotte studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford and lives with her husband and three children in West London.

Annie Francis: Director

Annie is one of the four founding members of Neighbourhood Midwives and, as CEO, is accountable for the overall strategic direction and development of the organisation. Her role includes responsibility for business development, strategy and performance, as well as sales and marketing, financials and any other key performance issues. A significant part of her work is the development and maintenance of key relationships with external agencies and other stakeholders including opportunities for future partnerships and collaborations within the NHS and other organisations. Annie has been a midwife for over 15 years, mostly in the independent sector and she continues to carry a small clinical caseload alongside her main role in the central management team.

Eleanor May-Johnson: Director

As the clinical co-ordinator, Eleanor is responsible for the midwives working within the organisation. Her role includes supporting and advising midwives on their clinical practice as well as the operational management of NM. She is the Director responsible for the IT infrastructure, Information Governance and is NM’s Caldicott Guardian. A midwife for over 11 years, Eleanor has worked within the NHS and independent sectors as a caseload midwife.

Louise Wilby: Director

As the lead for clinical governance, Louise has a role in maintaining the high standards that the organisation prides itself on. This includes monitoring outcomes, writing guidelines, clinical audit and risk management. As part of this role she is also involved in the training and development of the midwives. She is a midwife with 24 years experience in both NHS and independent clinical practice and midwifery education in the UK and New Zealand.

Tina Perridge: Director

Tina is responsible for human resources issues and the partnership culture. She is passionate about ensuring that all our midwives feel valued, supported and empowered. Working closely with her colleagues she is responsible for all recruitment, selection, induction and training as well as ongoing performance management. Tina is actively involved in establishing a share incentive plan for the employees and for developing and fostering the partnership style of working. As well as a successful career in training and development Tina has been in independent midwifery practice for 16 years.

Rene Bozier: Employee Director

Rene has recently been appointed as employee director after a unanimous vote by her colleagues. Rene feels this is an important role and is looking forward to representing the views and interests of the midwives at Board level. Employee ownership is a new way of working for midwives so it is therefore an evolving process and, she believes, an exciting time for the profession as a whole. Rene has had a very successful independent practice for 9 years and brings her knowledge and expertise in networking to the sales and marketing side of the business. She is also involved in the ongoing training needs of the midwives and is the current clinical lead for the South East team.

Team Midwives

Liz Smith: Caseload Midwife

Liz has been a midwife since 1994 working mostly in the community setting- caring for women and their familiesduring pregnancy and providing local antenatal classes to help prepare for the birth. She is passionate about home births and supporting women at home during the postnatal recovery period regardless of birth outcome. She lives in Surrey and has 2 teenage children who are a big part of her life journey.

Sally Harley: Caseload Midwife

Sally has 4 children of her own through 3 very different births. She has experienced both caesarean section and induction of labour in addition to her own naturally birth! Having trained for 3 years in the NHS she felt unable to offer the 1-to-1 care that she believed to be essential to the optimum outcome for mother, baby and the whole family. Sally love’s to facilitate birth at home but is also happy to support women in the hospital or birth centre environment using natural remedies such as homeopathy and aromatherapy. Working as a Neighbourhood Midwife allows Sally to spend time with women and their families, to build up a relationship, and to empower women to believe in themselves and their ability to birth in their own unique way.

Rachel Smith: Caseload Midwife

Rachel has spent much of her midwifery life within teams providing high degrees of continuity of care. She is passionate about individualised care in a non medical environment where possible and as such, loves visiting women in their homes for appointments. Rachel has 2 children and a variety of interests including gymnastics (watching and occasionally doing!) and listening to music.

Natasha Van der Linde: Caseload Midwife

Natasha was drawn to Midwifery after becoming a mother herself. Married with two children, Natasha has a passion for caseload midwifery and enjoys empowering women to make informed choices. Natasha combines her special interest in complementary therapies in pregnancy when caring for women. As a qualified NCT antenatal teacher with Mongon method Hypnobirthing training Natasha is able to support women with individualised birth preparation. In addition her background in teaching baby massage and baby yoga classes enables parents to have a joyful transition to parenthood.

Eva Cason-du Mont: Caseload Midwife

Eva's career in maternity care really started in 1997 when she was studying Women's History and was pregnant with her first child. She became inspired to support other families in experiencing pregnancy and childbirth as a natural, awe -inspiring, empowering and unique transformation rather than as a depersonalised medically managed condition. Eva spent 3 years working for a large North London NHS Trust, where she worked not only on the Birth Centre, arguably her favourite, but also gathered valuable experience in very high risk environments. She undertook further study in Normalising Birth at Kings College London in 2012. Eva lives in Harrow, but will provide care in the comfort of your own home and covers a wide area including Central, North, Northwest London and parts of Northeast, Southwest London and the home counties.

Lindsay Cousins: Caseload Midwife

Lindsay trained at a large obstetric unit but was always interested in developing ways to promote the normality of birth in all settings. She believes strongly in the importance of continuity of carer and in an attempt to gain greater experience of working outside of the hospital environment, she spent several months apprenticing with a certified nurse-midwife in the USA where she specialised in only home births sharing a caseload of between 4 to 6 women a month. Lindsay currently lives in Fulham and works with women accross south west London.

Julie Dawid: Caseload Midwife

Julie first felt called to midwifery whilst living in Canada, having witnessed beautiful midwifery care there. This vision of just how supportive and affirming the relationship between a woman, her family and midwife can be has steered Julie's path through an holistic approach to midwifery. She has trainings in a variety of complementary therapies, pregnancy yoga and antenatal teaching and loves bringing a creativity and warmth to her work with women,partners and babies.

Corina Wilson: Caseload Midwife

Corina has been working with birthing women since 2002 - first as a doula and then as a midwife. Her role prior to joining Neighbourhood Midwives was as breastfeeding specialist midwife for a large North London hospital alongside working in the Birth Centre and teaching childbirth preparation. She is a self professed birth geek and includes HypnoBirthing, Massage, Reflexology and Aromatherapy amongst other things to the training she has undertaken. She is delighted to be able to offer truly individualised, attentive midwifery care, meeting each women’s personalised needs and offering true choice. Along with Eva she covers north, north west London and the home counties.