At the 3-month mark of her investigations, the lead of a new review into maternity care in the UK has said that what she has seen so far “has been much worse” than she’d anticipated, with findings including dirty wards and hungry mothers.
Findings so far
BBC News reports that Baroness Amos, who is chairing a review into maternity care, said she was “confident… that change will happen” as a result of her review.
So far, the review has found that some women had felt blamed for their baby’s death, while others suffered from a lack of empathy, care or apology when things had gone wrong, with poor and black mothers often at the end of discriminatory services.
Baroness Amos said she had heard stories of women who are “being left in…rooms for hours on end”, and added that some women were being left to bleed out in bathrooms.
Following visits to seven NHS trusts as well as meeting over 170 families, Baroness Amos said she had consistently come across:
- A lack of cleanliness, women not receiving meals, or getting help to use the bathroom, with catheters not being emptied
- Women not being listened to, including concerns about reduced fetal movements
- Women of colour, working-class women and those with mental health problems are receiving discriminatory care
- NHS organisations “marking their own homework” when babies died or were harmed, with poor behaviours, including inappropriate language, not being tackled
But she stressed that she was looking into the worst cases. “There is lots of good care out there” and many trusts are doing a “good job”, she said.
She said that while she did not have the powers afforded by a statutory public inquiry, she was seeking to identify “systemic changes” that could improve the quality of care in hospital trusts across the country.
Aim of the review
Several Trusts have faced scrutiny and formal investigations into their maternity services, including investigations into maternity services in Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury & Telford and East Kent. These investigations have led to 748 recommendations for improvements being made, according to the Amos review.
Despite this, harm continued to occur and, most notably, Nottingham University Hospitals came under the spotlight and is now subject to the biggest maternity inquiry in the history of the NHS, examining around 2,500 cases in Nottingham.
Another inquiry was recently announced into care at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS trust.
Baroness Amos’s review, The National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation, is meant to draw up a series of national recommendations to improve maternity and neonatal services after previous inquiries had exposed the problems but not led to enough sustained improvements.
The final report from Baroness Amos will be published in the Spring, but the interim report – her reflections and initial impressions three months into the inquiry – highlights how ingrained poor care is.
She said:
“Time and time again, families feel that the system has failed them. I am very keen that that does not happen this time. And I think the fact that the Secretary of State has taken such a close interest is the thing that will make a big difference.”
Government response
Health Secretary, Wes Streeting said the update from Baroness Amos “demonstrates that too many families have been let down, with devastating consequences”.
He went on:
“I know that NHS staff are dedicated professionals who want the best for mothers and babies, and that the vast majority of births are safe, but the systemic failures causing preventable tragedies cannot be ignored”
Is the review sufficient?
The news that just 3 months into the review, more has come to light than anticipated has led some to query whether the scope of the investigation is sufficient.
Tom Hender, whose son was stillborn in 2022, believes a full public inquiry is the “only credible option”. He said:
“The review is already finding more than the chair expected,” he said. “That should be the clearest sign that the scope isn’t suitable and that the issues are bigger than the timescale can handle.”
It is clear that following decades of failings in maternity care, families are going to be paying close attention to this review and scrutinising it along the way.
National maternity and neonatal taskforce
Mr Streeting will chair a new National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce in the New Year, which will be responsible for implementing Baroness Amos’s recommendations. He promised that families who’ve suffered poor care “will remain at the heart” of what follows the review.
Comment
The early findings of this review are deeply troubling and show that too many families are experiencing avoidable harm at a time when they should feel safest. These systemic failings are not isolated incidents but part of a wider national concern about the consistency and safety of maternity services in the UK.
This will clearly not be the last intense review required to allow us to see a shift towards more stories of improvements in maternity care. It will be interesting to see the final report, but equally important that it is just the start of a positive turnaround in maternity services across the board.
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Danielle Young is a Partner in our Medical Negligence team, which has been ranked in tier one by the independently researched publication, The Legal 500. She specialises in pregnancy and birth injury claims (including cerebral palsy), brain injury claims, fatal claims, surgical error claims, and cauda equina injury claims.
If you have any questions in relation to the subjects discussed in this article, then please get in touch with Danielle or another member of the team in Derby, Leicester, or Nottingham on 0800 024 1976 or via our online form.
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