The reality
1 in 4
women aged 16+ in England and Wales have experienced sexual assault since the age of 16.
ONS, 2025 (25.6%, 6.3 million women)
BIRTH IS NOT NEUTRAL
1 in 5
women meet clinical criteria for a traumatic birth. Pregnancy, labour and birth can activate earlier trauma in ways often misread as difficult behaviour.
Webb et al, 2025 · LoGiudice, 2017
Why you will not know
85%
of women who experienced rape or assault by penetration since 16 never reported it to the police. Most never tell their maternity team either.
ONS, 2025 · de Klerk et al, 2023
This is not rare. It is routine
THE EVIDENCE
The question is not whether there is a survivor in your care. It is how many survivors you are caring for today.
Sources: ONS Sexual offences victim characteristics (2025) · Webb et al, INTERSECT UK (2025) · de Klerk et al (2023) · APPG Birth Trauma Inquiry (2024) · LoGiudice (2017) · Montgomery et al (2015) · ACOG (2021)
In a unit seeing 100 women a month, at least 25 have experienced sexual assault since the age of 16. In my experience, two or three will have disclosed. The rest are in your care, unrecognised.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Birth Trauma (2024) found systemic failures in consent, communication and compassion, and called for mandatory training in trauma-informed care.
For professionals
Training for maternity
and perinatal professionals
Practical training to help you provide
trauma-informed, person-centred care.
Trauma-informed maternity care
Foundational & advanced training
Workshops for NHS and private services
Consent & communication
Reducing retraumatisation
Practical tools for safer care
For women
Non-clinical support
for women
Compassionate trauma-informed support during pregnancy, birth and postpartum.
One-to-one birth preparation
Survivor-informed birth planning
Understanding what feels difficult and finding what helps
Self-regulation and grounding skills
Postpartum birth debrief
Advocacy with your maternity team
E
Control
Empower
F
Safety
Foster
A
Consent
Ask & Affirm
S
the Survivor
See
R
Don't react
Respond
OUR FRAMEWORK
The S.A.F.E.R. Model
“Trauma-informed care is not extra work.
It is better work.”
Who This Is For
Midwives
Perinatal mental health professionals
Social workers & family support workers
Student midwives
Available for individual professionals, team bookings, and organisational partnerships including NHS trusts.
Obstetric staff
Maternity support workers
Nurses
Health visitors
Charity based practitioners
Doulas
Healthcare assistants
Antenatal educators
Lactation consultants
Breastfeeding supporters
About the founder
Michaela Kalusová, MSc Psychology
SAFER Birth Project was founded by Michaela Kalusová, a specialist doula, educator, and trauma-informed practitioner with over fourteen years of experience supporting women through pregnancy and birth.
She has completed the When Survivors Give Birth practitioner training with Penny Simkin and Phyllis Klaus, studied pre- and perinatal psychology with APPPAH, and trained with Dr Michel Odent. Before SAFER Birth, she established a doula training programme and built an antenatal birth preparation company in the Czech Republic reaching more than 15,000 women.
Her path into this work began through a pattern she kept seeing as a doula: women who had seemed calm and prepared would become distressed in labour in ways that did not match what was clinically happening. Over time, she understood these responses were rooted in earlier sexual trauma, and that standard preparation was not reaching them.
She developed the S.A.F.E.R. model as a practical framework for trauma-informed maternity care and built the Supporting Survivors in Maternity Care professional training programme around it.