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Maternity failings uncovered within NHS in England are ‘widespread’ says health watchdog

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1 day ago

September 18, 2024

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Maternity failings uncovered within NHS in England are ‘widespread’ says health watchdog

A health watchdog has warned that failings identified within NHS maternity services across England are “more widespread” than previously thought.

A review of 131 inspections by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found common issues with the quality and safety of NHS services, with almost half (48%) rated as inadequate or requiring improvement.

Only 4% were classed as outstanding and 48% were rated as good.

The body – which inspects and regulates health providers in England – has called for urgent action to “avoid poor care and preventable harm becoming normalised”.

The CQC’s national review of maternity services in England found examples of:

• incidents of serious harm not being reported or were graded inconsistently

• women choosing to discharge themselves because of long delays in assessments

• units lacking space, facilities and occasionally potentially life-saving equipment

• women experiencing discrimination because of their ethnic background

Failings are ‘not isolated’

Nicola Wise, CQC’s director of secondary and specialist care, called for urgent action as “failings uncovered in recent high-profile investigations are not isolated to just a handful of individual trusts”.

“Although we’ve seen examples of good care and seen hardworking, compassionate staff doing their best, we remain concerned that key issues continue to impact quality and safety. Disappointingly none of those issues are new.”

‘Women deserve better’

Health Secretary Wes Streeting described the CQC’s findings as a “cause for national shame” adding the “crisis in our maternity services… is one of the biggest issues that keeps me awake at night”.

“Women deserve better…it is simply unacceptable that nearly half of maternity units the CQC reviewed are delivering substandard care,” he said.

The poor care is widespread across the NHS

What makes the CQC report into failing maternity care more difficult to accept is that it follows major scandals in Shrewsbury, East Kent and Nottingham.

It confirms what many people suspected. The failure to protect mothers and babies is not restricted to the trusts or regions which were exposed by the bravery and dogged persistence of whistleblowing parents.

The poor care is widespread across the NHS. In the words of the CQC, there is a danger that this substandard, dangerous care is “normalised”.

That has become the case in other areas of care. We now routinely expect to wait months for an elective appointment or mental health referral and spend all night in A&E.

But in maternity care, the stakes are arguably higher. It is a question of life and death.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the issue “keeps him up at night”. Imagine the dread being felt by an expectant mother who will deliver her baby at a trust rated poor in maternity care.

Donna Ockenden, the senior midwife who led the investigations into Shrewsbury and Telford and is preparing to publish her findings into the maternity scandal at Nottingham, is scathing in her assessment of the failure to raise standards.

She blames the Conservative government for making promises to act and then walking away from the problem.

She told me maternity services can have an embedded toxic culture. That will take time to change.

But what can be addressed right away is the extra staff and resources that are so desperately needed.

Donna Ockenden, who led a landmark inquiry into maternity failings at the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust, told Sky News that the last government was “asleep at the wheel” in relation to maternity safety.

Over two decades, hundreds of babies were left brain damaged or dead at the trust.

Ms Ockenden has repeated concerns she raised in May by insisting too little has changed since her report two years ago.

She is demanding a meeting with the health secretary, as she warned failings in care are putting mothers and babies at risk.

Ms Ockenden is now chair of a review into maternity services at the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

The UK’s first-ever parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma reported this year good care for pregnant women “is the exception rather than the rule”.

Poor care must not become ‘normalised’

The CQC report includes a series of recommendations to address safety issues including “increased national action and additional capital investment”.

Ms Wise described how money needs to be ring-fenced to improve maternity services. She said: “We cannot allow an acceptance of shortfalls that are not tolerated in other services. Collectively, we must do more as a healthcare system.

“This starts with a robust focus on safety to ensure that poor care and preventable harm do not become normalised, and that staff are supported to deliver the high-quality care they want to provide for mothers and babies today and in the future.”

Commenting on the report, Dr Ranee Thakar, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said the CQC report “should propel maternity care to the top” of the government’s priorities.

NHS chief midwifery officer Kate Brintworth added: “Despite the hard work of NHS staff, we know that, for large numbers of women and families, NHS maternity care simply isn’t at the level they should expect and there is a lot to do to improve.”