A MUM has revealed how maternity staff at a scandal-hit hospital told her to “keep the noise down” as her newborn died in her arms.
The devastated woman, named only as Mother 19, didn’t have long left with her baby girl after complications during her delivery.
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She was joined by distraught loved-ones, who had tearfully gathered to say their final goodbyes when, to their dismay, a staff member said “that if we didn’t keep the noise down, we’d have to leave.”
Her shocking testimony forms part of the report into catastrophic failings of baby units run by Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SATH).
It was partially leaked last week and revealed that more than 600 allegations of shocking substandard care had already been identified.
The report, compiled by the maternity expert Donna Ockenden, highlighted the deaths of 42 babies and three mums between 1979 and 2017, while 51 other tots suffered brain damage after being deprived of oxygen during birth.
Surge in cases
Since it emerged last Tuesday, there’s been a surge in new cases – with more than 200 families coming forward.
The inquiry was launched following the efforts of Rhiannon and Richard Stanton Davies, whose daughter Kate died shortly after birth in 2009, and Kayleigh and Colin Griffiths, whose daughter Pippa died shortly after birth in 2016.
And buried in the Ockenden report are more chilling testimonies from grieving families, who have decided to remain anonymous.
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They include that of Mother 19, who recently gave evidence about how her daughter died on the same day she was born “following a brain injury sustained secondary to birth trauma”, the Daily Mail reports.
In the report, she said: “You never get over it. It’s something you learn to live with on a daily basis.
“It changes you and your whole outlook on life. You’re not the same person any more.”
You never get over it… It changes you and your whole outlook on life. You’re not the same person any more
Mother 19
She also added that to make matters worse, staff lost her baby’s precious blanket and shawl.
“I never got them back,” she added, describing how she had to “push” the Trust to carry out a “serious incident review” – although she never learned the outcome.
Shocking details emerge
Another shocking case detailed in the report is that of Father 7, whose baby died shortly after being born.
He recalled how he was advised by a member of maternity staff that “the way to get over this is to try again, go and have another baby”.
Father 7 said: “They had to physically remove me from the room because I was going to choke X [the staff member in question].”
The report also revealed how Father 3 received no information about the death of his daughter and only received feedback when he “bumped into X [an ex-employee of the Trust] in Asda.”
Leaked report’s findings
The interim report written by Donna Ockenden details the pain suffered by the families. It points to:
- Babies left brain-damaged because staff failed to realise or act upon signs that labour was going wrong.
- A failure to adequately monitor heartbeats during labour or assess risks during pregnancy, resulting in the deaths of some children.
- Babies left brain-damaged from group B strep or meningitis that can often be treated by antibiotics.
- A baby whose death from group B strep could have been prevented after its parents contacted the trust on several occasions worried about their newborn baby.
- Many families “struggling” to get answers from the trust around “very serious clinical incidents” for many years and continuing to the present day.
- One father whose only feedback following his daughter’s death was when he bumped into a hospital employee in Asda.
- One parent reporting a “closed culture” at the trust over hospital fears of being sued.
- Families who told how “the trust made mistakes with their baby’s name and on occasions referred to a deceased baby as ‘it'”.
- Multiple families “where deceased babies are given the wrong names by the trust – frequently in writing”.
- One family who was told they would have to leave if they did not “keep the noise down” when they were upset following the death of their baby.
- One baby girl’s shawl was lost by staff after her death even though her mother had wanted to bury her in it.
- The “misplaced” optimism of the regulator the Healthcare Commission (a predecessor to the Care Quality Commission) that maternity services would improve following its interjection in 2007.
- Families who were advised “they were the only family”, and that “lessons would be learned”. The report said “it is clear this is not correct”.
- A “long-term failure” to involve families in serious incident investigations, some of which were “overly defensive of staff”.
In another case, parents were not told their baby’s body had arrived back from the post-mortem examination, and it was left to decompose so badly that the family never got to say a final goodbye.
Other families claimed that staff at the trust routinely dismissed their concerns, were unkind, got dead babies’ names wrong and, in one instance, referred to a baby who died as “it”.
A “toxic” culture of “avoidable deaths” is thought to stretch back 40 years.
The interim update report comes from an independent inquiry ordered by former health secretary Jeremy Hunt in July 2017.
Its initial scope was to examine 23 cases but this has now grown to more than 270 covering the period 1979 to the present day.
The cases include 22 stillbirths, three deaths during pregnancy, 17 deaths of babies after birth, three deaths of mothers, 47 cases of substandard care and 51 cases of cerebral palsy or brain damage.
Until now, Morecambe Bay, which saw the avoidable deaths of 11 babies and one mother at Cumbria’s Furness General Hospital between 2004 and 2013, was the worst ever maternity scandal in the history of the NHS.
West Mercia police is liaising with the inquiry and awaiting its findings before considering any criminal proceedings.
Delay getting paramedic
Failures to learn killed our little girl
STEADFAST Rhiannon Davies and Richard Stanton have been credited with triggering the inquiry after fighting for an inquest into their baby Kate’s 2009 death.
Midwives failed to put “pale and floppy” Kate in an incubator after her birth and waited half an hour to call paramedics as her condition deteriorated.
Rhiannon, of Hereford, said the report showed the Trust had “catastrophically failed to learn from incidents and past reports — and that failure condemned my daughter to death”.
The couple now want a police probe. She said: “We are fighting to save babies’ lives in our daughter’s name. I don’t trust anyone else other than the police now — there have been too many false promises.”
