Bereaved parents welcome police investigation into maternity care at NHS trust

Dr Jack and Sarah Hawkins lost their daughter Harriet during labour due to failings in care at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

Dr Jack and Sarah Hawkins and their daughter Lottie at home in Nottingham (Callum Parke/PA) (PA Wire)

A father who has been campaigning for justice after his daughter died during labour due to care failings has said he is “very pleased” to hear police are preparing to launch an investigation into maternity care at an under-review NHS trust.

Dr Jack and Sarah Hawkins, who should have been waving their daughter Harriet off to school like thousands of other parents this week, were told a police investigation is due to be launched after years of fighting for action.

Dr and Mrs Hawkins, who both worked at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUHT), were one of the first families to raise concerns over care failings after the death of their first-born Harriet during labour on April 17 2016.

Speaking after it was announced on Thursday that Nottinghamshire Police are preparing to open a criminal investigation into “maternity cases of potentially significant concern”, which will run alongside Donna Ockenden’s independent review, Dr Hawkins said it was a “brilliant” development that they have been calling for for some time.

He told the PA news agency: “We are so pleased because we imagined we would have to fight (the police) to be heard like we have had to do with every other organisation.

“We have been saying for a very long time that there has needed to be police involvement. (The trust) have known for a very long time that there have been problems in maternity and by not dealing with that, we say there has been avoidable harm to other people, which wouldn’t have happened if they had taken seriously what they were told in 2016.

“We don’t want people to be guilty necessarily, but we do want it to be investigated – to what extent can there be so many baby deaths in this town and nobody held accountable?

“It wouldn’t be like that if it was an entire playground of children who came to harm and died in a year, it is just unimaginable that we have got to this position.”

Chief Constable Kate Meynell said Nottinghamshire Police “plan to hold preliminary discussions with some local families in the near future” and Dr Hawkins says he expects she will want to meet them.

He said: “It is difficult because we are parents to an avoidably dead child, we have been blowing the whistle repeatedly and now have, sadly, a lot of friends that we have met through this that have dead, damaged, brain damaged, severely hurt children.

“It is very sad that we are even here, but in the context of what we have been fighting for, it is very welcome news.

“We accept that investigations will take a long time, but we hope that it looks at not just individual cases and how they are linked, but looks at what we call the cover-up – where people knew what was happening and didn’t respond.”

Dr Hawkins said while they are focused on getting justice for Harriet and the other families who have been affected by the care they received at NUHT, they want to make sure no-one else has to go through what they have been through.

He said: “If Harriet had been killed by someone in a car there would have been an investigation, and if the person in that car had done something wrong there would have been accountability and justice.

“We still understand that there are a large number of people at the hospital who don’t truly believe there is a maternity scandal. So for this news today, it just brings another level of focus.

“We don’t want anyone else to die or come to harm so we want change. Because nothing has happened, there has been no accountability.

“And what that has shown is that you can cause horrific harm to families, not be honest about it, and nothing happens.”