Maternity staff are accused of ‘blaming mothers for the deaths of their babies’ on eve of devastating report into hospital trust
- Investigation findings into alleged maternity scandal at the trust will be laid bare
- Dr Bill Kirkup chaired investigation into mother and baby deaths in Morecambe
- His report is expected to expose a catalogue of serious failings
The families of two babies who died at a hospital trust under investigation for up to 200 incidents involving mothers and infants say staff blamed them.
Helen Gittos and Kelli Rudolph lost daughters while in the care of East Kent Hospitals.
Today, the findings of an investigation into an alleged maternity scandal at the trust will be laid bare in a review by Dr Bill Kirkup, who also chaired the investigation into mother and baby deaths in Morecambe in 2015.
His report is expected to expose a catalogue of serious failings, including how newborn babies died needlessly due to poor care planning over several years, while parents’ concerns were ignored.
The families of two babies who died at a hospital trust under investigation for up to 200 incidents involving mothers and infants say staff blamed them
Mrs Gittos, who lost her daughter Harriet in 2014, said she was ‘treated dismissively, contemptuously and without a desire for understanding’.
In a statement, she added: ‘It is hard enough to come to terms with the death of a child. It is even harder when you are implicitly blamed for what happened.’
Dr Rudolph and Dunstan Lowe lost their daughter Celandine when she was five days old after she was delivered at William Harvey Hospital in Ashford in 2016. They claimed the hospital’s response had added to their grief.
Dr Rudolph said: ‘Their response to their poor medical judgments was to blame me. That is what I’ve had to live with.’
Mr Lowe added that he hoped the Independent Investigation Into East Kent Maternity Services would be ‘the bridge between the pain we’ve experienced and the anger and the urgency for the things that are broken to be repaired immediately.’
Pictured above are the ten NHS Trusts with the lowest C-section rates over the year to March 2021, the latest available. There were five trusts that had lower C-section rates than Shrewsbury and Telford which was at the centre of the biggest maternity scandal in Britain. A devastating five-year inquiry ruled that the trust’s obsession with ‘normal births’ contributed to failings. *Official NHS data reports the rate at Royal Cornwall at 15 per cent, but the trust disputes these statistics
The report, which was delayed by the Queen’s death, is expected to say avoidable baby deaths happened because recommendations following other NHS maternity scandals were not implemented.
Tracey Fletcher, chief executive of East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, has warned maternity staff to expect a ‘harrowing report’.
The trust said a statement would be issued when the report is published. It was commissioned after up to 15 babies died at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate.
The review was triggered by the death of newborn Harry Richford in November 2017, with one midwife describing ‘panic’ during attempts to resuscitate him.
The trust recorded his death as ‘expected’ and did not inform the coroner, but an inquest revealed he had died due to seven gross failings that amounted to neglect.
In June 2021, the trust was fined £733,000 for failing to provide safe care and treatment for Harry and his mother, Sarah Richford.
Source: Read Full Article
