30 March 2022
The sheer importance of today’s report, tells the tragic stories of what 1,600 families had to endure due to poor standards of maternity care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. It is about an NHS maternity service that failed. It failed to investigate, failed to learn, failed to improve and ,therefore, often failed to safeguard mothers and their babies at one of the most important times in their lives. It is vital that there are now immediate and essential actions to improve care and safety in national maternity services.
It is wholly unacceptable that poor standards of care were able to be repeated for such a long period of time, exacerbated by a culture of blame and fear within the NHS. It is recognised that many of the issues highlighted in this report are not unique to Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust and have been highlighted in other local and national reports into maternity services in recent years. This needs to change NOW. The Lily Mae Foundation welcomes the news that an increase in Maternity funding will target better training and areas that will ultimately reduce avoidable harm!
Our thoughts are very much with all of those families who will continue to bear the loss of their precious babies. Every mother and baby has the right to the safest and best care from the NHS Maternity Services. We hope that today’s report opens the door to a new and very much improved maternity experience.
Ryan Jackson (CEO: The Lily Mae Foundation)
Access to the full report can be found here