Families want Oxford maternity care inquiry

A campaign group has brought together 500 families unhappy with their care at hospitals like the John Radcliffe

A campaign group has said Oxford's maternity care must be looked into for shortfalls under Health Secretary Wes Streeting's newly-launched investigation.

Streeting announced the move on Monday following what he called "failures in NHS maternity care that should never have happened".

The group Families Failed by OUH Maternity Services, which has brought together 500 families unhappy with their care at Oxford University Hospitals (OUH), said the city should be one of the locations investigated urgently in the inquiry's first stage.

OUH said it works hard to ensures good experiences but when things do not go as planned it conducts thorough reviews.

The Department for Health and Social Care has not yet announced all the maternity and neonatal units to be looked at initially, but said those chosen will be the most concerning ones.

Warning: The following contains upsetting content

Laura Ayoade says she was left alone after telling a midwife she wanted to take her own life

Laura Ayoade gave birth at the John Radcliffe Hospital in 2023.

After an initially positive experience, she said she later had forceps and a vacuum used which she said she did not consent to and had explained she could not cope with psychologically.

"To protect myself, I closed my eyes and stopped talking for the rest of the time," she said.

Later, she said she told the midwife she wanted to end her own life but was left alone for two hours and had to call a crisis phone line for help.

OUH said: "We apologise for not being able to respond in detail about individual patient cases and regret any instances when we fail to provide the service that women and families expect.

"When this happens, we make every effort to review individual cases to understand what went wrong and how we can improve.

"We also make every effort in such cases to keep the woman and family informed of what action we have taken to improve and what lessons we have learnt."

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