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Annie Francis, chief executive of a local midwifery service says that women benefit from having a dedicated midwife. The statement comes from Francis at a time when Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is getting ready to prepare an outline of a package of measures that will be helpful in improving care during  pregnancy and at the early stages of motherhood.

The Neighbourhood Midwives' a NHS-funded social enterprise based in Wandsworth, south London, helps women during and after pregnancy. They take care of a woman's personalized care - physical, emotional and psychological with each woman being provided with a personal midwife.

Their Web Site states,"Our service will be available to any woman, living in an area where we have been commissioned to provide care, who is medically low risk and who would like to have a home birth for her second or subsequent baby."

"She will be able to meet her midwife at the start of her pregnancy and to develop a relationship with her throughout the antenatal period, the birth and up until 6 weeks postnatally."

Lansley hopes to assign a 'named midwife' to every pregnant women so they may have continuous support before and after they give birth, reported the Telegraph. According to Francis, the service is really helpful and that mothers and babies she helps are already benefitting from the personalized care offered to them.

"There are so many benefits ... in terms of the actual outcomes it's a much higher normal birth rate, lower Caesarean section rate, higher breast feeding, so there's all sort of benefits, but the woman at the end really has enjoyed it much more as a process, " she told The Daily Telegraph.