The state of England’s maternity services is a ‘cause for national shame’, Health Secretary Wes Streeting admitted last month.
As a journalist who has covered the alarming situation for years, I couldn’t agree more.
Successive reports have highlighted deep-rooted problems which are putting mothers, babies and staff at risk. One of the most recent, by the Care Quality Commission, warned that preventable harm was so widespread it risked becoming ‘normalised’.
I have spoken to scores of women and their partners affected by maternity care failings. I’ve heard devastating stories of lasting trauma, injury and deaths which have frustrated and angered me to my core.
More so because it’s often caused by the same problems – a failure to listen to women’s concerns, a lack of properly trained staff, poor communication between medical teams and pressure to clear hospital beds.
Katie Fowler, whose baby died due to NHS blunders, got the brush-off from Mr Streeting when she wrote and asked to meet
We’re short of 2,500 midwives. Two-thirds of maternity units are officially not safe enough. Maternal death rates are at their highest in 20 years. Yes, Wes, it’s a shameful situation. So, as our new Health Secretary, what are you going to do about it? At the moment, it’s far from clear.
In June, Mr Streeting described how maternity care failings caused him anxiety ‘in the pit of my stomach’ – and pledged, if he became minister, he would meet affected families and hear their concerns. I was buoyed that finally we might see positive action. But were they just empty promises?
Last week I reported on how one bereaved mother, Katie Fowler, whose baby died due to NHS blunders, got the brush-off from Mr Streeting when she wrote and asked to meet.
She and her husband Rob Miller are among eight families whose children died at the same hospital trust. Instead of acknowledging the request, his department sent her an insultingly careless cut-and-paste response.
Of all the maternity care failings I have reported on, Katie’s is one of the most harrowing.
She nearly died in labour in January 2022 after midwives who were relying on telephone assessments dismissed her concerns as a panic attack. In fact, she was suffering massive internal bleeding and collapsed on her way into hospital.
Her daughter, Abigail Fowler Miller, was delivered by emergency C-section in a public foyer. She died in her parents’ arms about 48 hours later.
Their story is an horrific example of the worst-case scenario – but it’s these examples that Mr Streeting must hear to understand just how dangerous systemic failings in maternity services can be. Yet in reply to Katie’s letter detailing their situation, it was an unnamed ‘correspondence officer’ who got the job of knocking out a series of bland platitudes.
The state of England’s maternity services is a ‘cause for national shame’, Health Secretary Wes Streeting admitted last month. Pictured with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer
I’ve seen and analysed the letter, which starts off by offering ‘sincere sympathies’.
It goes on: ‘Childbirth should not be something women fear or look back on with trauma,’ seemingly oblivious to how insensitive it is to say this to a woman whose baby was cut from her body in a public lobby in a panicked attempt to save both their lives.
But it wasn’t just insensitive, or even crass – shockingly, it was rehashed from a media statement made by Wes Streeting last month, the very same one where he had mentioned ‘national shame’.
The letter goes on to tell Katie that baby loss certificates are now available for pregnancies which end before 24 weeks, to help ‘all parents to manage the difficult time of a loss’ – words copied from a press release issued in February under the previous Tory health secretary Victoria Atkins.
While that scheme is a positive step forwards in miscarriage care, it feels callous to suggest it to a mother whose only child died in such shocking – and avoidable – circumstances.
‘The Government recognises that there are serious issues with maternity services and is committed to learning from the findings from recent inquiries and investigations,’ the letter adds.
These exact words were used by health minister Karin Smyth in August when she responded to a parliamentary question about an unrelated issue.
‘I hope this reply is helpful,’ it concludes. Katie feels, rightly, insulted. ‘Flippant and impersonal,’ is how she described it.
Last week, Nisha Sharma, a Slater and Gordon lawyer who is representing Katie’s family and multiple similar cases, called out Mr Streeting for failing to meet victims. ‘I would urge [him] to look these families in the eye and see their pain,’ she said.
She is right. To understand an issue, you must hear from the people at the heart of it.
I’ve witnessed parents cradling tiny boxes containing their child’s ashes. I’ve heard the tremor in a father’s voice as he recalls begging doctors to keep his dying baby on life support until his comatose wife can be woken to meet her.
I have also spoken publicly about my own experience of appalling care, when maternity staff failed to notice my pelvis had snapped during childbirth. Although I was in agony and unable to sit up, lie flat or take a step without unbearable pain, I was sent home without diagnosis or treatment to care for my baby. It took me more than three years to recover.
Katie Flowler and her husband Rob Miller are among eight families whose children died at the same hospital trust
Mr Streeting, you must hear all of this too, or you won’t truly understand just how broken this system is. And you must speak to midwives, to learn how unsafe working conditions are pushing talented staff to quit, out of fear that the next avoidable harm or death will happen on their shift.
Maternity care did not get into its current state of crisis on Mr Streeting’s watch, but it will only get worse until he stops spouting soundbites and listens.
He needs to look these people in the eye and feel their grief, rage and frustration that this keeps happening. If he doesn’t, it is all too easy to dismiss as statistics the injured mother, the baby who died or the midwife who quit after one too many dangerously understaffed shifts.
It is telling that Katie Fowler heard nothing more from Mr Streeting’s department until I spoke to its press office last week. Afterwards, she was suddenly contacted by one of his team. He’s now promised to meet her, and I hope he does.
Dismissing families with generic cut-and-paste letters is simply not good enough – and it certainly won’t stop any more mothers and babies from dying.
