Steve Williamson, Chief Executive, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We welcome the publication of the National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation, and want to thank Baroness Amos and her team for carrying out this important piece of work.
“As a Trust, we were keen to be involved in the investigation as it gave us the opportunity to share learning and examples of good practice from our improvement journey and highlight any further work we could do to strengthen our maternity services.
“It’s important that we acknowledge the ongoing pain that some families are going through because of actions taken by this Trust in the past. While we have made significant changes and improvements in recent years, that does not lessen the impact on those involved, and we will never forget that.
“However, we are in a very different place now and our teams have given their all to make positive changes to the services we offer local families. These changes include establishing a new leadership team, strengthening governance and oversight, and embedding a culture focused on openness, learning and effective multidisciplinary working. We are listening more closely to families, investing in bereavement support and triage facilities, improving staffing levels, and taking targeted action to ensure more equitable care for all women and their babies.
“These improvements have been recognised by the CQC who recently rated our maternity services as ‘good’ for the first time since 2019, We were also ranked fourth nationally for overall positive scores in the recent CQC Maternity Survey with most survey questions showing either stability or improvement.
“These significant changes deserve to be celebrated but it isn’t the end. We know we have more to do and are absolutely committed to continuing to work with our teams, families, key partners and local communities to move forward.”
Some of the improvements that maternity and neonatal teams at UHMBT have made in recent years, include:
- Establishing a new senior maternity leadership team made up of midwifery, obstetric and paediatric colleagues who are focused on openness, accountability, visibility and safety
- Launching an in-house leadership programme for midwives and neonatal nurses, alongside structured leadership visibility and engagement
- Introducing a culture improvement programme to strengthen learning, teamwork and inclusion across all staff groups
- Expanding safe speaking-up opportunities, including Freedom to Speak Up initiatives and regular colleague engagement forums
- Increasing training on behaviours, teamwork and psychological safety
- Strengthening performance reporting with better data triangulation and enhanced Trust Board oversight to identify risks earlier
- Improving investigation quality and timeliness, with multidisciplinary reviews and consistent sharing of learning
- Increasing external scrutiny and collaboration with system partners and regulators to support and assure improvements
- Enhancing patient and family support, including closer work with Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership, a single bereavement contact, a dedicated
- fulltime bereavement midwife and £2m investment in a new bereavement suite and triage unit at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary
- Strengthening workforce capacity and safety through reduced midwifery vacancies, use of evidence-based staffing tools, and improved escalation processes
- Enhancing equity of care by better use of data to identify inequalities and introducing targeted support for women at higher risk or facing barriers to care