Social Welfare Services and Maternal Health in Calabar Local Government Area, Cross River State, Nigeria.

This research titled “social welfare services and maternal health in Calabar South Local Government Area Of Cross River State.” The main objective of the study was to examine the relationship between social welfare services and maternal health in Calabar South Local Government Area Cross River State. The study specifically examined the relationship between provision of women education, referral services, psychosocial counseling and advocacy services in the development of maternal health in Calabar South Local Government Area Cross River State. The specific objectives were translated into research hypothesis and four research questions were developed. Additionally the research took note of certain statement of the problem, such as issues of maternal health becoming a controversial and this constitute a social problem, most maternal care facilities are not accessible as result of bad governance. Many women’s, especially in rural areas, lack access to quality health care services, skilled birth attendants and emergency in term of doctors and nurses absence n health institutions. Related literature was extensively reviewed, and also various theories were use to explain and understand the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable. A descriptive survey design was adopted. Data was collected from 200 respondents. The simple random sampling techniques were adopted to select the sample size. The instrument of data collection was the questionnaire. From the analysis, it was found out that there was significant relationship between women education, referral services, psychosocial counseling and advocacy services on the impact of maternal health. The study recommended that social welfare services should be made to cover both women’s from cities to grassroots for better improvement of the women and effective performance and also social workers should educated and sensitized pregnant women of the important of antenatal and proper nutritional diet during pregnancy, should be sponsored by the government and nongovernmental organization to educate people in the area of study. Additionally, the study concluded that social welfare services has a positive relationship with maternal health.