2.1 Study design
This study was undertaken as part of the Achieving Safe and Personalised
maternity care In Response to Epidemics (ASPIRE-COVID19) project
designed to determine ‘what works’ in providing care for mothers,
babies, and families during and after a pandemic [10].
One of the work packages of the ASPIRE study comprised a comparison
between the UK and the NL maternity care responses, including
documentary analysis of public maternity care organisational documents
that influenced national maternity care policy and interviews with
national maternity care stakeholders. Three domains are reported in this
paper, because they emerged during the study as areas where there were
evident differences between the two countries. These domains were choice
of birthplace, companionship during the perinatal period, and the extent
to which women and families in vulnerable situations had been
considered. A modified “Framework Method”, with a combined inductive
and deductive approach was used to examine similarities and differences
in policy in these areas, and, more importantly,
to identify drivers that might
explain these similarities and differences [11].