Hungry mothers, dirty wards and poor care are blighting England’s maternity services while staff receive death threats for working in some units, according to a new report.<\/p>\n
Baroness Amos, who is chairing a review into maternity care, said that what she has seen so far \u00ab\u00a0has been much worse\u00a0\u00bb than she’d anticipated.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who set up the review, said \u00ab\u00a0the systemic failures causing preventable tragedies cannot be ignored\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
Streeting said the update from Baroness Amos \u00ab\u00a0demonstrates that too many families have been let down, with devastating consequences\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0I 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,\u00a0\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The report from Baroness Amos – her reflections and initial impressions three months into the inquiry – highlight how ingrained poor care is.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the BBC, the former UN diplomat said that she recognised there was \u00ab\u00a0scepticism\u00a0\u00bb and \u00ab\u00a0criticism\u00a0\u00bb of her approach.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Time 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.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Several inquiries over the past decade, including investigations into maternity services in Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury & Telford and East Kent, have led to 748 recommendations for improvements being made, according to the Amos review.<\/p>\n
Yet still the harm continues \u2013 the biggest maternity inquiry in the history of the NHS, examining around 2,500 case in Nottingham, is due to report in June while another inquiry was recently announced into care at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS trust.<\/p>\n
Following visits to seven NHS trusts as well as meeting over 170 families, Baroness Amos said she had consistently come across:<\/p>\n
The review has also engaged with staff in maternity services. Some reported having rotten fruit thrown at them, while others said they faced death threats after negative publicity or were attacked on social media.<\/p>\n
Adverse media attention could make delivering high quality care more difficult, they said, although it had also acted as catalyst for improvements.<\/p>\n
Baroness Amos’s final report will be published in the Spring, but her inquiry is controversial. Some families believe that limitations on what it can do, and the short time is has to do it, will mean that meaningful action cannot follow.<\/p>\n
The Maternity Safety Alliance, which wants to see a statutory public inquiry into maternity failings, said the initial reflections had \u00ab\u00a0prioritised\u00a0\u00bb staff feelings while minimising the \u00ab\u00a0avoidable harm taking place in NHS maternity services every day\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0This is entirely the wrong process to fix the deep seated and long standing failings in maternity care and we do not understand why [Wes Streeting] is allowing this farce to continue.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
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 \u00ab\u00a0will remain at the heart\u00a0\u00bb of what follows the review.<\/p>\n
James Titcombe, a long standing maternity safety campaigner since he lost his son Joshua in 2008, said that while the issues identified by Baroness Amos \u00ab\u00a0mirror long-standing problems we’ve known about for years,\u00a0\u00bb he was supportive of its work as representing \u00ab\u00a0the best opportunity in a generation to finally put maternity services on a safer path.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hungry mothers, dirty wards and poor care are blighting England’s maternity services while staff receive death threats for working in some units, according to a new report. Baroness Amos, who is chairing a review into maternity care, said that what she has seen so far \u00ab\u00a0has been much worse\u00a0\u00bb than she’d anticipated. Some women had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}