PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Glob. Women’s Health

Sec. Maternal Health

Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fgwh.2025.1597924

This article is part of the Research TopicEmotionally-centred Perinatal Care, Practices and ExperiencesView all 6 articles

Perspectives on trauma-informed maternity care for those with a history of child sexual abuse.

Provisionally accepted
Elsa  MontgomeryElsa Montgomery1*Lucy  DuckworthLucy Duckworth2
  • 1King's College London, London, United Kingdom
  • 2The Survivors Trust, Rugby, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Failure to listen has been a recurrent issue for recent users of maternity services in the UK. The need to listen to women has been recognised in successive reports. Listening is particularly difficult when the population unheard such as those who have experienced child sexual abuse. Despite its prevalence and lasting impact on physical and mental health, care of women who have experienced child sexual abuse is not usually part of healthcare professional or student education. This paper discusses the benefits of trauma-informed care to meet the needs of survivors of child sexual abuse. It also discusses the co-production of an e-resource on trauma-informed care for women and birthing people who have experienced child sexual abuse. The resource addresses the related educational gap for healthcare professionals and enables the powerful words of this silent, hidden population to be heard.

Keywords: Trauma-informed care, child sexual abuse, Maternity care, E-resource, Co-production

Received: 21 Mar 2025; Accepted: 03 Jun 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Montgomery and Duckworth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Elsa Montgomery, King's College London, London, United Kingdom

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