Senior Aboriginal midwife at Waminda, Melanie Briggs, said staff shortages due to COVID-19 have prevented vital home visits for expecting mothers and hospital restrictions have left women without family support during birth.

"It's very stressful. We're maintaining safety with vaccinations, wearing our PPE, providing service in the clinic and in the home where we can," said Ms Briggs.

"We're trying to work with our mums and our families who are highly stressed about their children and themselves getting COVID. But staff are getting COVID and we're not at capacity to provide the service.

While visits were restricted during the pandemic, Ms Briggs made sure all women had a midwife to call for support.

"We needed to be on call for our women because it's the right thing to do," she said. "If we had more funding for more midwives on the ground, we'd have a good work life balance."

Waminda's Birthing on Country program provides wrap-around maternity support in the community and in hospital with intrapartum birth care, followed by postnatal care for up to six weeks.

It returns maternity services to Indigenous communities that are accessible, relationship-based and incorporates traditional birthing practices.

But for the past five years, the centre has lobbied for government funding so a fully integrated birthing centre with more staff can properly support the program.

"It's still not funded. We went into the last election with the commitment from both Liberal and Labor," said Ms Briggs. "But nobody backed it with solid, firm commitment."

According to NSW Health data, the perinatal death rate for Aboriginal mothers rose to just over 13 for every 1000 births during the first year of the pandemic. This is a 30 per cent increase from 2019 and the highest it's been in nine years.

Ms Briggs said an Aboriginal-led Birthing on Country program is the next step in combating these figures.

Funding would go towards a new birthing centre at the Nowra clinic, hiring six full-time Aboriginal midwives and other services including case management and NDIS support to provide holistic maternity care.

"The pandemic absolutely would have affected stillbirth rates without access to face-to-face services," she said.

"A lot of women don't have a model of care like ours and have to access mainstream services, and a lot of Aboriginal women don't feel safe in that space."

Ms Briggs welcomed support from Gilmore candidates who said they would argue for funding for the program as priority if elected.

"I've been following the project for quite some time," said Gilmore MP Fiona Phillips, who launched a petition for the program last week.

"We should be doing everything possible to ensure culturally appropriate services not just at birth, but right through the whole birthing process are delivered. My key goal is to secure infrastructure funding for this project."

Liberal candidate for Gilmore Andrew Constance also said he would take Waminda's proposal to parliament.

"The organisation supports 3000 Aboriginal women, there's an incredible need for it (the program) in our community," said Mr Constance. "I'll take the proposal forward and find a way for it to be funded."

To donate to the Birthing on Country fundraiser, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/birthing-on-country.

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