Bereaved father 'not surprised' by maternity review

Robert Miller said seeing other families go through similar experiences was sad and frustrating

A grieving father said he was not surprised that a national review into England's maternity services found "too many" people were not receiving the care they deserved.

The Care Quality Commission's (CQC) national review from 2022 to 2024 was published on Thursday and several issues were flagged, including staffing shortages.

Robert Miller, whose baby daughter Abigail Fowler Miller died at Brighton's Royal Sussex County Hospital in 2022, said: "It's not a shock to hear that. Many families have been saying this for almost a decade now."

An inquest had found that Abigail's life would have been prolonged if her mother Katie Fowler had been admitted to hospital sooner.

What the report said

The CQC's review of 131 units across the NHS highlighted issues with staffing, buildings, equipment and the way safety was managed, warning preventable harm was at risk of becoming “normalised”.

The review found examples of good practice but expressed concern about problems with equipment, delays to emergency Caesareans, limited access to toilets and showers, and cramped and overheated wards.

Inconsistencies in the way safety incidents were monitored and recorded, poor leadership, triage problems, and evidence of discrimination were also flagged.

NHS chief midwifery officer Kate Brintworth said: "We know there is much more we need to do to drive up standards of care and build on improvements already made, and we will continue to provide intensive support to the most challenged trusts and support a growth in the maternity workforce.”

Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting said the findings were "cause for national shame" and that the NHS was "broken".

"Women deserve better - childbirth should not be something they fear or look back on with trauma," he said.

"It is simply unacceptable that nearly half of maternity units the CQC reviewed are delivering substandard care."

'It's just heart-breaking'

Mr Miller said: "I'd like to see some real positive change made to maternity services to prevent these situations and this harm happening to mothers and babies."

The Hove resident explained that seeing other families go through similar experiences was "sad but also frustrating".

"Too many people are being hurt every day and the longer this goes on, the more people that will suffer and it's just heart-breaking," he said.

Clinical negligence lawyer Holly Cossutta said the report was "shocking", but it did not surprise her.

She said: "I've been dealing with these kind of cases for over two decades now, so I've worked on behalf of families who are dealing with failing maternity services for a long time, and sadly I've seen the same sorts of things go wrong time and time again."

Mr Miller said he was "hopeful" there would be change following the report, which was "another step in the right direction".

"This is only the beginning, so much more needs to be done to fix this," he added.

The father is fighting for a national inquiry into the maternity services at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (UHSussex), along with eight other families who have lost a baby.

Chief nurse at UHSussex Dr Maggie Davies said since CQC’s inspection in 2021 its teams were committed to improving the service and its safety outcomes were now "well above" national benchmarking rates.

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