The Maternity Safety Alliance, a group of bereaved families and maternity safety campaigners from across the country, has written to the Health Secretary Steve Barclay, calling for a national public inquiry into maternity safety in England.
Alongside this, the Maternity Safety Alliance has launched a campaign for a statutory national maternity inquest.
The letter to Steve Barclay said:
“…our babies are too precious to keep on ignoring the reality that, despite a raft of national initiatives and policies implemented in the wake of investigations and reports, systemic issues continue to adversely impact on the care of women and babies”.
Signatories to the letter include Emily Barley, whose daughter Beatrice died during labour at Barnsley Hospital. Further signatories include James Titcombe, whose son Joshua died at Morecambe Bay, and Jack and Sarah Hawkins whose daughter Harriet, died during labour at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Ms Barley told the PA news agency that “local level inquiries that have taken place are great and really useful” but that maternity failings were “not isolated problems, it’s a system-wide problem”. She further advised that “we need a whole system analysis to really understand what’s going on and how it can be fixed”.
The letter also notes that:
“…over and over again we hear that ‘lessons will be learned’ – and yet those same failings continue. And they don’t just continue in isolated corners of the NHS, they are present to some degree in almost every NHS trust in England, with the most serious kind of avoidable harm occurring everywhere.”
This follows recent investigations at the University Hospital of Morecombe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, which identified 20 major failures, and East Kent Maternity Servies which concluded dozens of babies might have survived if they had received better care.
Donna Ockenden, who led the review at Shrewsbury and Telford, is currently leading an independent review of maternity services at the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.
This also comes after the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said 65% of maternity services are now regarded as inadequate or require improvement for safety.
Comments
We welcome and support national action being taken in respect of maternity care and safety in England.
Although it has been beneficial to conduct individual investigations, there is a clear pattern of systematic failings in maternity care across NHS England. Long-term systematic changes need to be implemented nationwide to improve maternity care and safety.
A lot more is required at a national level to ensure the voices, concerns and experiences of families and young mothers are heard. A statutory public inquiry will provide the opportunity for this and for the NHS and government to tackle safety issues in maternity care at its core.
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Rachel Benton is an Associate in our Medical Negligence team, ranked in tier one by the independently researched publication, The Legal 500. Rachel specialises in a wide variety of medical negligence claims, including pregnancy and birth injury claims.
If you have any questions concerning the subjects discussed in this article, then please get in touch with Rachel or another member of the team in Derby, Leicester or Nottingham on 0800 024 1976 or via our online form.
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