Should grans volunteer in maternity wards?

I throughly agree with Dorsetpennt.
I am a retired nurse who did midwifery training after I qualified in 1966, but never actually praticed midwifery, so apart from when I had my own two children have had no experience of maternity wards since.Things have changed an awful lot since then,I have five grandchildren and when they were born tended to sit back and let their mothers get on with it unless they asked for help.
I think this has painted a rosy picture of volunteers going around cuddling newborn babies and chatting to new mothers. All very well but what will it lead to?.Once this has started volunteers will be expected to do all the not so nice things like emptying rubbish bins and horror of horrors, cleaning toilets so that means no contact with newborns.The trouble will start when there will be two teams of volunteers, one to do the nice bits and the other to do the not so nice bits.When the teams change over the ones who suddenly will be on the cleaning side will forget to come in.
There will have to be CRB checks, as things have been known to go a missing from hospitals, and in my experience when this happens the voluntary workers are always suspected first, before the paid staff.
Once this government gets away with volunteers on maternity wards the next step is volunteers on all hospital wards including care of the elderly which I imagine will not be as popular.Feeding and helping to care for elderly people is not as nice as helping to care for new mothers and babies.
The reason volunteers are used is that the wards are understaffed because this government are cutting costs.There are nurses and midwives who cannot get work because staffing levels have been reduced to save money.This is also the reason why patients are being discharged far too early.When I had my two children, who where both born by emergency ceasarian I was in hospital 14 days each time and was more or less back on my feet when I got home, the wards were fully staffed, I had excellant care and volunteers were unheard of.That was the old days, now over and gone.
Sorry for the long rant.Agree or not agree with me I dont mind.