The Ockenden Maternity Review’s final report has been published and says that Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust ‘failed to investigate, failed to learn and failed to improve and therefore often failed to safeguard mothers and their babies at one of the most important times in their lives’. Following on from the ‘Immediate and Essential Actions’ for maternity services recommended in the Ockenden Review’s first report, the final report includes a further 84 recommendations, including more than 60 for action that must be taken to improve maternity services by the Trust, in what Donna Ockenden recently described as a ‘blueprint of care’. The Ockenden Independent Review of Maternity Services at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust is the largest maternity review in NHS history, shining a long-awaited light on the harrowing experiences of more than 1400 families who suffered the death and life-changing injury of their mothers and babies. Responses to the report included a commitment to action from the Department of Health, and a police investigation into 600 maternity incidents at the Trust. Meanwhile the report warns that future maternity care at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust must recognise ‘that there will be an ongoing legacy of maternity-related trauma within the local community, felt through generations of families’.Read the full article on our specialist cerebral palsy website here.
