Hello everyone,
We wanted to share with you a few updates!
Theo's Foundation is now a proud member of The Baby Loss Awareness Alliance and The Maternity Safety Alliance. This will enable us to continue to campaign for changes and improvements in maternity care.
We are calling for a National Maternity Enquiry and implore you all to reshare this petition, to send to your local MP's to call on them to back an inquiry into the current state of Maternity Care.
- 800 babies die each and every year because of failings in care.
According to a report from the Sands and Tommys Joint Policy Unit, reviews of
individual deaths show that around 800 babies each year die when care following national guidelines could or would have saved their lives. This is likely to be an underestimate given that these reviews are conducted by the hospital responsible for the baby’s care. - Our Hospital alone told us they deal with at least 120 bereaved families a year! One preventable death is too many!
- More mothers are dying during or soon after pregnancy than at any time in the
last 20 years. Data from MBRRACE shows that the maternal death rate increased to 13.41 per 100,000 in 2020-22, a higher rate than at any time since 2003-05. - The figures also show that proportionally three times as many Black women and twice as many Asian women die than White women. Even when the effect of Covid-19 is stripped out, maternal deaths have increased at an alarming rate.
- More than 500 babies per year sustain a brain injury at birth.
Data from MNSI shows that over 500 babies per year sustain brain injuries at birth, but this data excludes babies born below 37 weeks gestation and does not measure how many of these injuries were avoidable. - Mums are suffering life-changing physical and psychological birth trauma. Despite a parliamentary inquiry on the subject, it is still unclear how many women suffer birth trauma and how much birth trauma is avoidable – again, because the NHS does n measure it. As an indication of the scale of the problem a survey by Mumsnet found that 53% of women suffer physical trauma and 71% of women suffer psychological or emotional trauma at birth.
- Two thirds of maternity units do not meet basic standards for safety.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated two-thirds of maternity units
‘Inadequate’ or ‘Requires Improvement’ for safety, and half ‘Inadequate’ or ‘Requires Improvement’ overall. These ratings show that failings in maternity care are truly system-wide. The even more alarming reality is that the CQC is itself failing, and continues to rate units where multiple babies have been killed by negligence as ‘Outstanding’. - The cost of harm in maternity care rose to £4.2 billion in 2022/23.
Figures from NHS Resolution show the projected cost of harm in maternity care for 2022/23 is £4.2 billion, 63% of the total NHS compensation bill. This money is awarded to families after many years of desperate struggle to pay for care needs and lost earnings, and just as the harm they experienced is entirely avoidable with safe care, this financial cost is too.
Behind these terrifying and tragic headlines and statistics sits a system that is broken and needs a complete overhaul to protect these precious lives. To ensure that when failures occur and deaths or serious injury could have been prevented that action is taken. Please sign this petition and share to your Socials and your local MP to ask them to back this inquiry and help us Create a Stampede of Change... Because EVERY Life is Precious!
Thank you once again for the help and support you have given us, and are giving to so many other Bereaved Families. Together we are united, together our voices are louder and can make change.