Campaign ambassador Sally Sivas is clinical midwifery manager at Mayday Healthcare in Croydon. She talks about her work and how her family inspired her to choose a career in midwifery

MY GRANDMOTHER Catherine Tolland was just nine years old when she first helped to deliver a baby. Both she and my other grandmother Helen McLean were lay carers in the community of Anderston in Glasgow. Prior to the advent of the NHS, mothers had to pay for a doctor or midwife to visit and lay carers attended when a baby was born, or when someone died. My older sister Elizabeth, the first qualified nurse in our family, was a source of great pride to my parents and remains a powerful inspiration for my career as a nurse and midwife.