Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what written and verbal safety netting advice is routinely shared with mothers around antenatal screening for the presence of pathogens associated with sepsis.

In September, NHS England published the 2017 Cross-System Sepsis Action Plan. As part of this a number of activities are planned:

- Action on safety netting will be embedded among all healthcare professionals assessing patients with infections;

- Promote the implementation of a range of educational resources on sepsis produced by Health Education England and the Royal Colleges;

- Ensure a specific focus on sepsis education for staff groups such as community pharmacists, community nurses, health visitors and healthcare assistants in care homes; and

- NHS England and Public Health England will work with maternity networks and health visitors to ensure resources such as leaflets and on-line educational material are used by midwives and health visitors to help parents recognise serious illness in children and know what to do if they think their child is seriously ill.

To support these activities, two safety netting videos on ‘Spotting the signs of sepsis’ and ‘Caring for children with fever at home’ have been published with the Health Innovation Network.

In 2017/18 Public Health England’s activity to raise awareness of sepsis includes building sepsis messaging into the national Start4life Information Service for Parents email programme which reaches 430,000 parents of 0-5 year olds; distribution of leaflets and posters; social media and activity with a leading digital platform for parents.