The inquiry’s chair, Donna Ockenden, announced during a meeting on Monday that 1,700 families’ cases would be looked at.She oversaw the investigation into Shropshire’s services, which led to the discovery that at least 201 mothers and babies might have lived if they had received better treatment.
Numerous infant fatalities and injuries at Nottingham University Hospital (NUH) NHS Trust prompted the review.
It centers on the trust-run maternity units at the Queen’s Medical Center and City Hospital.
1,266 families have contacted the review team directly thus far, and 674 of them have agreed to participate.
Ms. Ockenden, however, has demanded a “radical review” to guarantee that “women from all communities” were approached by the trust and “felt confident” to come forward.
The families had requested that the review be changed from “opt-in” to “opt-out” by the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, and the trust.
In a letter to the impacted families, NHS England has now confirmed that cases will be handled on an opt-out basis, with families being required to opt out of providing consent.
At the annual meeting of the trust on Monday, Ms. Ockenden and grieving relatives were joined by NUH chairman Nick Carver.
In order to regain the trust of families and communities, he agreed that more work needed to be done. He then pledged to “work collaboratively to plan for an apology on behalf of the board that the families recognise as meaningful.”
In a prior statement, he promised that the trust will publicly apologize to anyone who received subpar maternity care.
“We haven’t listened to women and families who have been impacted by shortcomings in our maternity services for too long,” he said during the meeting.
“This brick-wall strategy has exacerbated pain, and this needs to change.”
Ms. Ockenden informed the group about the review’s broad scope.
“My promise to you as families today is the same as the promise I made to you in September at the start of this review, that as a review team we will do everything we can to ensure that this review is one for all Nottinghamshire families.”
“Family accounts have already resulted in some positive changes, but the trust still has a very long road ahead,” she continued.
“What has happened cannot be corrected in a single day.”
The meeting was referred to be “a very important milestone” by NUH CEO Anthony May.
He characterized the tales of some of the mothers he had met as “very harrowing” in an interview with BBC Radio Nottingham.
“When I hear those stories, it makes me very sad and very determined to improve things in the hospitals,” the man stated.
“Today, what we want to do is send a message to the families that we want a new relationship based on openness and trust, and we want to try to understand how they might assist us in making improvements to the maternity services.
“I would like to say that I think they’re really brave, I think they’re very persistent, and the fact that we’ve gotten to where we are with the review is largely down to their efforts.”
A thorough apology on behalf of the NUH board would be made “on the family’s terms,” according to Mr. May, who apologized after taking over the position last year.
He said that maternity service employees “work incredibly hard” and said, “It’s the trust that’s let them down.”
According to Mr. May, the trust has “made improvements” in terms of both staff training and equipment, and new doctors and midwives, including some professionals from abroad, are “in the pipeline.”
We are slowly getting better, but there is still a mountain to climb, he remarked.
Jack and Sarah Hawkins, whose daughter Harriet was stillborn at the trust in 2016, responded to the NUH declarations by saying that the dedication to transparency was “massive.”
To be honest, it’s a bit of a shock to the system, said Ms. Hawkins.
“We have just been striving to be heard for seven and a half years.
“So it’s absolutely amazing that they’re going to adopt an open and honest attitude, as they say.
It remains to be seen whether that occurs, but it is unquestionably a move in the right direction.
The organisation that speaks on behalf of parents stated in a statement: “We welcome today’s vow from the trust for a ‘new honest and transparent relationship’ with a sense of relief and optimism.
“For far too long, we’ve been battling for more than just our voices to be heard—we’ve been fighting for action and accountability.
“We deserve to learn who knew what and when, why it was allowed to continue; and how the trust avoided scrutiny for so long.”
Over 95% of impacted families were included in Ms Ockenden’s prior evaluation in Shrewsbury and Telford, which also utilized the “opt-out” strategy.
1 377 families received letters from the Nottingham trust at the end of November and the end of January.
The letters were sent to families who had lost a mother to death, stillbirth, neonatal mortality, brain injury in the infant, or harm to mothers.
However, fewer than 360 families replied to these messages.
In total, 28% of the white women contacted answered, compared to 10% and 5% for black and Asian women.
Only roughly 25% of the families in Nottingham that are known to be affected have been taken into account.
The 674 families that have signed up for the assessment, according to Ms. Ockenden, “are not even close to being a representative sample of the rich diversity that we know exists in Nottingham.”
There is a great deal more work to be done.
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