Pressure is building over the safety of maternity care in the United Kingdom, with two major reports due to be published this month. One is a national review, while the other examines the Nottinghamshire Trust. Together, their authors have spoken to around 2,500 families who say they received poor and, in some cases, fatal care, and the findings are being seen by many as a watershed moment.
The issue has been taken up by a Member of Parliament who was herself failed by maternity services and was treated at the Nottinghamshire Trust. She said she is not alone, describing an army of families and hundreds of organisations she has worked with, both before and since her election, who are pushing to keep attention on the dangers facing women across the country.
She described a system she said is completely broken, even as frontline staff try to provide safe and compassionate care. Unless the government makes big and bold policy changes, she warned, women and babies will not be protected in the future. She praised midwives and obstetricians working day in and day out while arguing that they too are being failed by the way the system is run.
At the same time, she acknowledged the scepticism many families feel. There has been a long cycle of scandals, investigations, reports and recommendations that, she said, have too often been left on the shelf. Her central demand was that the findings this time must be turned into action rather than another set of conclusions that are quietly ignored.
She set out what change should look like, calling for real continuity of care. She said she had more than 15 midwives involved in her own treatment and had to keep retelling her story, her health needs and her medication, an experience she said is far from unusual. She argued that such fragmented care leaves too much room for things to go wrong.
Accountability was the other central theme. She said staff need the confidence to admit and apologise when something has gone wrong, while regulators need the ability to step in early when problems emerge at a trust. She pointed to Nottingham, to Shrewsbury and Telford, and to inquiries in Leeds as examples of women and babies being systematically failed.
Among those affected are Eva and Tom Hender, whose son Aubrey was stillborn in 2022. Eva said her pregnancy had been by the book until 36 weeks, when her waters broke prematurely. She was kept on a ward for around 36 hours and said she did not see a doctor for roughly the first 33, while she repeatedly told everyone she saw, from the cleaner to the consultant, that Aubrey's movements were growing weaker and fainter.