Health secretary urged to reinstate maternity safety fund after NHS hospital scandals

Hancock under growing pressure to bring back national £8m education programme for midwives and doctors

Shaun Lintern
Health Correspondent
Wednesday 29 January 2020 13:51 GMT
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Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has called on his successor Matt Hancock to reinstate the NHS maternity safety training fund in response to scandals at hospitals in East Kent and Shrewsbury.

In a debate on NHS funding in the House of Commons Mr Hunt said the £8m fund was vital for safety and that it made a big difference.

The charity Baby Lifeline and The Independent have called on ministers to re-instate the funding which was axed after just one year despite helping to train more than 30,000 maternity staff.

Mr Hunt linked the training to wider issues in the NHS workforce adding: “We know from the 2018 Mind the Gap report on the issues at the Shrewsbury and Telford and the East Kent trusts, among others, that only 8 per cent of trusts supply all the care needs in the saving babies’ lives bundle, so the maternity safety training fund is essential.

“I hope the health secretary will renew it, because it makes a big difference.”

The Mind the Gap report was an analysis by charity Baby Lifeline which found widespread variation in maternity training across the country including attendance, funding and what training was provided.

It found there was too little money and too few staff members available to deliver training to maternity unit workers.

At Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals Trust, a leaked report in November revealed dozens of deaths and children left disabled because of repeated failures by staff to learn from mistakes.

And at East Kent University Hospitals Trust, between 2014 and 2018, there were 68 baby deaths, 143 stillbirths and 138 babies who suffered brain damage after being starved of oxygen.

The trust recorded 81 separate serious incidents in maternity care during the four-year period with some involving similar errors being repeated.

In October 2019, Caroline Dinenage, minister of state at the Department of Health and Social Care, told MPs the maternity safety training fund was a success and helping to transform maternity care.

She said: “Every trust has received a share of the £8.1m maternity safety training fund, and 30,945 training places for multidisciplinary teams were delivered in 2018-19, with courses focusing on training for childbirth emergencies in labour wards and in the community, as well as on leadership, communication and resilience.”

The government has set an ambition to reduce the number of stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and brain injuries during birth by 50 per cent by 2025.

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