Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the report by the charity Bliss, entitled Locked Out: the impact of COVID-19 on neonatal care, if he will publish a National Neonatal Roadmap to help neonatal units to return to full parent access.

Updated guidance published on 15 April 2021 is clear that parents of babies in neonatal critical care need to be involved in their baby’s care as much as possible and should not be considered as visitors, and is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2020/12/C1243_Supporting-pregnant-women-using-maternity-services-actions-for-providers_150421.pdf

The guidance also sets out that trusts should undertake a risk assessment, make changes to the configuration of space used to provide care and use any available testing capacity to maximise opportunities for parents to be with their babies and to identify how to facilitate parental presence at all times of day.

To facilitate full parent access in all neonatal units in England, NHS England and NHS Improvement have worked closely with trusts to adopt the actions set out in the updated guidance and to remove barriers which prevent trusts being able to facilitate parental presence in neonatal units.