An update on Swansea Bay's Maternity and Neonatal Services

At our recent board meeting we considered ongoing improvement work in our Maternity and Neonatal Services.

The meeting also, under a separate item, heard directly from the Chair of the Independent Review’s Oversight Panel and its patient engagement lead on the progress the review team is making.

The Llais report on experiences in our Maternity and Neonatal Services, which was published earlier in May, was also referenced, together with the way in which the Independent Review would take the Llais findings into account alongside feedback from other engagement activities.

We wanted to once again put on record at the Board our gratitude to all of the women and their families who took the time to feed into the Llais work – we know this will have been difficult for many women and families reliving poor or traumatising experiences in our care.

We also thank Llais for the work they have undertaken to enable so many people to share their experience and to report on this so clearly.

At the Board, we acknowledged that for some women and their families, the care we provided was not of the quality it should have been and for a small number of women and families, the outcomes have been devastating and life-changing.

We offer our heartfelt and sincere apologies to those women and their families. We are supporting a number of families but if anyone feels that they need to raise concerns regarding their care, please encourage them to come forward or please contact us on their behalf.

The Chair of the Independent Review also reinforced the message that the Independent Review wants to hear from as many people as possible and has confirmed that women can still come forward to share their experience if they wish to do so.  

We are making improvements in the way we deliver our Maternity and Neonatal Services – we are not just waiting for the final report of the Independent Review. 

Some improvements have already been delivered, such as improved staffing levels and the reopening of the home birth service and stand-alone birth centre at Neath Port Talbot Hospital.

Other improvements are underway, such as the strengthening of our approach to triage and the development of a dashboard of key information that tells us how the service is performing and flags issues of concern – while this is up and running, we are continuously fine-tuning it to ensure that we have the right information at the right time to inform decisions and highlight issues.

We have also contributed to the development of the All-Wales Maternity and Neonatal Framework which we are now implementing.

But we know there is more we need to do to ensure that we provide high quality, compassionate, trauma informed care every time for every patient.

Our team colleagues in our Maternity and Neonatal Services are committed to learning from the feedback already secured and that which will come from the Independent Review’s findings. We know they want to provide the very best care they can for and with our patients and we would like to thank them for the positive way in which they are responding. 

Our new Executive Director of Nursing and Patient Experience who has joined us from a NHS Trust in England has taken on the executive lead for Maternity and Neonatal Services.  She is establishing a new Perinatal Services Committee that will oversee ongoing improvements and will report into our Board’s Quality and Safety Committee and thereafter to our Board. 

At its meeting, the Board was reminded by the Oversight Panel Chair of the far-reaching nature of the Independent Review and the credentials of those involved. The scope for the Independent Review was extended following feedback and the clinical review team and separate Oversight Panel consist of UK leading experts in their fields. They are entirely independent subject matter experts on the clinical services within scope and on engaging with people and families, including those have experienced trauma.

When we receive the final report of the Independent Review in July, we will need to take some time to conscientiously consider its findings.  We will do that and ensure that we are clear about how we will engage with families and service users in the weeks to follow so that we can develop an improvement plan together.

Any individual with concerns about their past, current or future care, can get in touch via SBU.MaternityEnquiries@wales.nhs.uk  or by telephoning 01639 683316.  The inbox and telephone line are manned Mon-Friday 8.30 -5pm.