Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is their response to the conclusion in the 2020 final progress report of the Each Baby Counts programme run by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists that 7 per cent of parents in 2018 were not invited to local reviews into still births, deaths of babies who died within seven days of birth, or births of babies with severe brain injury.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has introduced several initiatives which seeks to ensure that parents are engaged in reviews following adverse outcomes, and that lessons are learnt within the National Health Service.
The Perinatal Mortality Review Tool (PMRT) provides objective and standardised reviews for bereaved parents about why their baby died. It also aims to ensure local and national learning to improve care and ultimately prevent future baby deaths. All bereaved parents have the option to be involved in a high-quality review of the death of their baby via the PMRT. The fifth annual Perinatal Mortality Review Tool report highlighted that parental engagement with the PMRT has improved. 96% of parents in the United Kingdom were told that a review of their care would take place. Parents’ perspectives of the care they received was reported as having been sought from 95% of these parents. A copy of the report is attached.
The Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigations (MNSI) Programme conducts single-case investigations into specific cases of stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and brain injuries. It is within the remit of the programme to analyse data to identify key trends and provide system wide learning to the health system. Parental engagement is a key aspect of the investigations conducted by the MNSI.
To improve maternity services in England, NHS England published the Three year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services in March 2023. The plan sets out how NHS England will make maternity and neonatal care safer, more personalised, and more equitable for women, babies, and families. A copy of the plan is attached.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to raise awareness of what can be done to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Prevention and early intervention are paramount to preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), and we want to ensure that every family receives the support and guidance they need during the early days of parenthood.
Health visitors have an important role supporting child health, wellbeing, and parenting confidence. They support families in improving health literacy, managing minor illnesses, and preventing accidents, including promoting safe sleeping for babies. Health visitors can also work with early years services to ensure that safer sleep messages are promoted across early years services. Further information is available at the following link:
The Department is also working alongside NHS England and the National Child Mortality Database (NMCD) to increase the data bank on SIDS, to increase our evidence base, understanding, and inform actions and policy.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of maternity staff leaving NHS employment on services.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department works with NHS England on a regular basis to review the numbers of staff working in National Health Service maternity services, and to identify any issues which could potentially impact services.
Growing, retaining, and supporting the maternity workforce to ensure that there are staff with the capacity and the right skills to deliver safe, personalised, and equitable care for women and babies is a key theme of NHS England’s Three Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services. NHS England is also delivering a nursing and midwifery retention programme, supporting organisations in assessing themselves against a bundle of interventions aligned to the NHS People Promise, and to develop high-quality local retention improvement plans.
Written Evidence Apr. 24 2024
Inquiry: Preterm BirthFound: deaths being necrotising enterocolitis (and inflammatory disease of the bowel seen in preterm babies
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the additional £165 million of annual funding provided by NHS England to improve maternity and neonatal care, which will rise to £186 million a year this year, and how this will directly improve babies’ health and development outcomes.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The investment within maternity and neonatal services supports the delivery of NHS England's three-year delivery plan, which will make maternity and neonatal care safer, more personalised, and more equitable for women and babies.
The plan outlines the investment we are making in listening to women and families, growing, retaining, and supporting our workforce, developing, and sustaining a culture of safety, and underpinning more personalised and equitable care. The plan sets out success measures for trusts, integrated care systems, and NHS England, to monitor the impacts and improvements at every level.
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of maternity and neonatal safety improvement schemes on mitigating the effects of inequalities in perinatal deaths.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
In March 2023, NHS England published its three-year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services. This sets out how the National Health Service will make maternity and neonatal care more equitable, as well as safer and more personalised.
The three-year delivery plan is based on evidence, including the impact on inequalities where available, and wide consultation. NHS England is tracking the impact on maternity and neonatal outcomes based on ethnicity and deprivation.
A central ambition of the delivery plan is to reduce inequalities in access, experience and outcomes for women and babies. This is being delivered through the implementation of Local Maternity and Neonatal Systems equity and equality action plans and advocating a proportionate universalism approach, alongside targeted service models designed to reduce inequalities, including enhanced midwifery continuity of carer and culturally sensitive genetics services for high need areas.
NHS England is also providing training and resources for all maternity and neonatal staff, so they can deliver culturally competent and sensitive care. This includes access to cultural competence training, developed in partnership with the Royal College of Midwives, and provision of clinical training aids to support care for women and babies with black or dark skin. In November 2023, NHS England offered £50,000 funding to each NHS England regional team in England to implement ethnic minority workforce training to upskill staff and promote more equitable experience for service users.
In January 2024, the NHS Race and Health Observatory launched the Learning and Action Network in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Health Foundation. The Learning and Action Network will utilise an anti-racism approach to quality improvement to drive clinical transformation and enable system-wide change. It will work with nine healthcare systems to improve maternal and neonatal health outcomes.
Additionally, the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC’s) national maternity inspection programme, which completed in December 2023, looked at how services are addressing inequalities in maternity care through a safety and leadership lens. The CQC will be reporting on their findings from the inspection programme later this year and will include findings relating to inequalities.
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that maternity and neonatal safety improvement schemes include a focus on mitigating the effects of inequalities.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
In March 2023, NHS England published its three-year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services. This sets out how the National Health Service will make maternity and neonatal care more equitable, as well as safer and more personalised.
The three-year delivery plan is based on evidence, including the impact on inequalities where available, and wide consultation. NHS England is tracking the impact on maternity and neonatal outcomes based on ethnicity and deprivation.
A central ambition of the delivery plan is to reduce inequalities in access, experience and outcomes for women and babies. This is being delivered through the implementation of Local Maternity and Neonatal Systems equity and equality action plans and advocating a proportionate universalism approach, alongside targeted service models designed to reduce inequalities, including enhanced midwifery continuity of carer and culturally sensitive genetics services for high need areas.
NHS England is also providing training and resources for all maternity and neonatal staff, so they can deliver culturally competent and sensitive care. This includes access to cultural competence training, developed in partnership with the Royal College of Midwives, and provision of clinical training aids to support care for women and babies with black or dark skin. In November 2023, NHS England offered £50,000 funding to each NHS England regional team in England to implement ethnic minority workforce training to upskill staff and promote more equitable experience for service users.
In January 2024, the NHS Race and Health Observatory launched the Learning and Action Network in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Health Foundation. The Learning and Action Network will utilise an anti-racism approach to quality improvement to drive clinical transformation and enable system-wide change. It will work with nine healthcare systems to improve maternal and neonatal health outcomes.
Additionally, the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC’s) national maternity inspection programme, which completed in December 2023, looked at how services are addressing inequalities in maternity care through a safety and leadership lens. The CQC will be reporting on their findings from the inspection programme later this year and will include findings relating to inequalities.
Mar. 28 2024
Source Page: General Medical Services Statement of Financial Entitlements Directions: previous directionsFound: General Medical Services Statement of Financial Entitlements Directions: previous directions
Written Evidence Jan. 24 2024
Committee: Health and Social Care Committee (Department: Department of Health and Social Care)Found: to help identify and overcome the barriers to local, equitable provision of interpretation services
Written Evidence Apr. 24 2024
Inquiry: Preterm BirthFound: Variation in care and health inequalities -The implementation of existing NICE and NHS guidance on