Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to (a) record and (b) report the number of miscarriages each year.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises that experiencing a miscarriage can be an extremely difficult time. We are determined to make sure all women receive safe, personalised, and compassionate care, particularly when things go wrong.
While miscarriage hospital stay data is collected, the majority of baby losses occur outside of healthcare settings, and it is rightly the choice of the individual who has experienced the loss to disclose this information to healthcare professionals. It is therefore not possible to gather accurate and comprehensive data on miscarriages.
The Pregnancy Loss Review was published in July 2023 and recommended policies to improve data around miscarriage. We will ensure that we listen to women and their families, and learn lessons from recent inquiries and investigations, including this report.
Asked by: James MacCleary (Liberal Democrat - Lewes)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve support for families affected by baby loss including (a) access to counselling services, (b) support for siblings and (c) training for healthcare professionals in providing compassionate care.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England’s Three Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal services sets out how the National Health Service will make care safer, more personalised, and equitable. The plan includes a commitment to provide compassionate and high-quality care for bereaved families.
To deliver on this commitment, NHS England has made additional funding available to ensure all trusts can offer a seven day a week bereavement service. NHS England has also invested in Maternal Mental Health Services to provide care for women with moderate to complex or severe mental health difficulties, and published the Core Competency Framework for providers, to address known variation in multi-professional training and competency assessment, including for bereavement care.
Additionally, the National Bereavement Care Pathway (NBCP) aims to reduce the variation in the quality of bereavement care provided by the NHS to ensure that parents receive quality and consistent care after pregnancy or baby loss. The pathway acts as a set of standards and guidance that trusts should follow when a patient has suffered a pregnancy or baby loss, with the aim of ensuring that all bereaved parents are offered equal, high quality, individualised, safe, and sensitive care. Since June 2024, all NHS England trusts had signed up to the NBCP.
To support NHS staff to handle a range of difficult situations, NHS England has also launched an e-learning module, Handling difficult situations – Caring for yourself and others with compassion, for NHS staff in frontline, patient facing roles. This e-learning module, which is available for free, aims to help upskill colleagues in how to handle difficult situations with compassion, using appropriate communication techniques and active listening skills.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that parents do not have to wait six months or more for post-mortem results following the death of a baby.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises the significant impact of delays in post-mortems on bereaved families. Specialised perinatal pathology services provide medical investigations, including post-mortem examinations following the death of a foetus or baby. These services are delivered by 18 National Health Service hospital trusts in England.
Perinatal pathology services are currently experiencing significant staff shortages. There are 26.15 whole time equivalent consultant vacancies, which is a 46% vacancy rate across the service. The lack of consultant staff is impacting the service’s ability to produce post-mortem reports in line with national standards, as set out in NHS England’s service specification B, which is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/e12-perinatal-path.pdf
In response to the impact that the staffing challenges are having have on the service, NHS England has established a Perinatal Pathology Transformation Programme which is implementing interventions to increase perinatal pathology service capacity over time and improve the post-mortem reporting time. The programme reports to a national Steering Group which has clinical, commissioning, and key stakeholder representation, including service users and patient and public voice representation, through the baby loss charity Sands. The Royal College of Pathologists is also included in the membership of the Steering Group.
Additionally, we welcome and are carefully considering the findings of the Justice Committee’s recent follow-up Inquiry into the Coroner Service, including on coronial pathology provision.
Asked by: Adam Thompson (Labour - Erewash)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will make an assessment of the effectiveness of (a) maternal mental health services launched in 2019 and (b) maternal mental health services pregnancy and baby loss pathways in supporting bereaved mothers.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
A National Institute for Health and Care Research-funded study has been commissioned to examine the effectiveness and the implementation of maternal mental health services, including the services’ provision of support for perinatal loss. The study will help identify the optimal service delivery models and context-specific barriers to implementation.
The research aims to understand how effective maternal mental health services are in improving mental health for women who have experienced trauma or loss related to childbirth, and the feasibility and effectiveness of maternal mental health services in providing trauma informed training across the maternity workforce.
To date, maternal mental health services have been implemented in 40 of the 42 integrated care system areas in England, and the last two are being supported by NHS England to ensure they are up and running as soon as possible.
We are committed to improving the mental health support available to those in the perinatal period. We know that the National Health Service has struggled to keep up with people’s greater awareness of the challenges of poor mental health, and that waiting lists for those referred for support are too high. We will reduce waiting times, intervene earlier, and increase the workforce as quickly as possible to meet the required needs.
Asked by: Liam Conlon (Labour - Beckenham and Penge)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) to raise awareness of (i) pregnancy and (ii) baby loss and (b) improve bereavement care for (A) mothers and (B) families impacted.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to ensuring that all women and babies receive safe, compassionate, and personalised care, particularly when things go wrong. In February 2024, the Department launched the Baby Loss Certificate service. This service is a non-statutory, voluntary scheme to enable those who have experienced any pregnancy loss to record and receive a certificate to provide recognition of their loss, if they wish to do so.
To support the reduction of preventable baby loss, all trusts are implementing the third version of the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle, which provides maternity units with detailed guidance and a package of interventions to reduce stillbirths, neonatal brain injury, neonatal death, and preterm birth.
Many trusts have specialist bereavement midwives, who are trained to care for and support parents and families who have suffered the loss of their baby. All trusts are now signed up to The National Bereavement Care Pathway, which acts as a set of standards and guidance that trusts should follow when a patient has suffered a baby loss.
Paid Parental Bereavement Leave was introduced in 2020. This entitlement is available to parents who lose a child under 18 years old, including where a baby is stillborn after 24 weeks of pregnancy.
In May 2024, NHS England published a new national policy framework to provide all National Health Service staff who suffer a miscarriage with up to 10 days additional paid leave. Women who experience a miscarriage in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy are offered up to 10 days paid leave, and their partners are offered up to five. The new guidance supports NHS employees and provides managers and colleagues with advice on how to support people affected by baby loss, including ensuring that staff who return from work after their pregnancy loss are offered occupational health support, including referrals to specialist services at their trust, or specialist miscarriage and baby loss charities and organisations.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the provision of health services for women.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Women’s health is a priority for this government. We are considering how to take forward the Women’s Health Strategy and aligning our work on women’s health with the forthcoming 10-Year Health Plan.Work continues to improve health outcomes for women, including the £25 million women’s health hubs pilot, new NICE guidance on endometriosis and menopause and extending the Baby Loss Certificate service.
Asked by: Andy McDonald (Labour - Middlesbrough and Thornaby East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the provision of health services for women.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Women’s health is a priority for this government. We are considering how to take forward the Women’s Health Strategy and aligning our work on women’s health with the forthcoming 10-Year Health Plan.Work continues to improve health outcomes for women, including the £25 million women’s health hubs pilot, new NICE guidance on endometriosis and menopause and extending the Baby Loss Certificate service.
Asked by: Alice Macdonald (Labour (Co-op) - Norwich North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the provision of health services for women.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Women’s health is a priority for this government. We are considering how to take forward the Women’s Health Strategy and aligning our work on women’s health with the forthcoming 10-Year Health Plan.Work continues to improve health outcomes for women, including the £25 million women’s health hubs pilot, new NICE guidance on endometriosis and menopause and extending the Baby Loss Certificate service.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help improve women's health.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
I would like to thank my Hon. Friend for her continued interest in women’s health.
Women’s health is a priority for this government, and we are considering how to take forward the Women’s Health Strategy.
Work continues to improve health outcomes for women, for example through the £25 million women’s health hubs pilot, and recent extension of the Baby Loss Certificate Service to all historic losses.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to implement the policies in the policy paper entitled Women’s Health Strategy for England, published on 20 July 2022.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This government is committed to prioritising women’s health as we build an NHS fit for the future, and women’s equality will be at the heart of our missions. We are considering how to take forward the Women’s Health Strategy for England, and work continues to improve health outcomes for women. For example, the Department is continuing to work with NHS England to support the establishment of at least one pilot women’s health hub in every integrated care system, following a £25 million investment. As of September 2024, 36 of the 42 ICBs reported to NHS England that their pilot women’s health hub was open. Additionally, on 9th October, during Baby Loss Awareness Week, the Department launched an extension to the Baby Loss Certificate Service, meaning the service is now available for all historic losses, with no backdate, as well as future losses.