“It’s so hard to even look at these pictures because I can feel their emotions,” said Hawkins, whose daughter Harriet was stillborn, nine hours after her death, at the end of a six-day delivery at his hometown hospital. Nottingham in 2016. “Bringing out all the emotions, [the Shrewsbury report] it was like copying and pasting Nottingham. Here, we have dead babies, we have wounded mothers, we have hypoxic babies. It’s absolutely awful. “ What happened in Shrewsbury and Telford is considered the worst motherhood scandal in NHS history. But in Nottingham and East Kent, where maternal care failures have also been identified, families are still waiting to learn the full extent of the problem. A review of maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals is under way, with the number of families rising from 84 to 387 in just a few weeks. “We have a private Facebook group for peer support only and we have over 103 people,” Hawkins said. “If Nottingham is not on the same scale as Shrewsbury, it will be more. It’s just scary. And I think there will be so many people out there who will come forward now and say, ‘My God, I was not alone.’ The NHS Institute at East Kent University Hospital is the subject of a government order to review its obstetric care, led by Dr. Bill Kirkup, after it emerged that some babies had died after receiving, as their families said, poor care. “So much of Ockenden’s criticism is so resounding. “It’s painful to deal with,” said Helen Gittos, who lost her daughter Harriet eight days after giving birth in 2014. She was taken to hospital after experiencing difficulties during a home birth, but waited more than an hour to see a counselor and Staff continued to claim that she had refused medical intervention, which she herself denies. James Titcombe lost his son Joshua: “I was impressed by how similar the findings are.” Photo: Joel Goodman / LNP “The way I was blamed for what happened was very difficult to deal with. “But learning that so many people have experienced the same thing is shocking.” “There is a special kind of horror when you discover that none of the awful things that have happened to you are terribly special.” Reading Ockenden’s review was also particularly difficult for families affected by the Morecambe Bay survey in 2015, which found that maternity services were flooded with a culture of denial, collusion and incapacity from 2004-2013. “I had a tremendous sense of deja vu and sadness and frustration,” said James Titcombe, whose son Joshua died in 2008 after hospital staff failed to detect signs of infection for nearly 24 hours. “I was really impressed by how similar the findings are.” He said he was disappointed to see the same problems highlighted in the Morecambe Bay report being mentioned elsewhere and said people were “just kidding themselves” if they believed the trusts under investigation were “one-off”. “The problem with Morecambe Bay, I think, was that there was a tendency to dismiss it as a one-off,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. We must not make this mistake now with Shrewsbury and Telford. “Otherwise, we’ll be back here again.” Titcombe said that while there was some improvement from the Morecambe Bay survey, and ONS data showed that stillbirths and infant deaths had fallen, much more needed to be done, and families were skeptical about whether the Ockenden report would have resulting in permanent changes. It does not take much to look at Ockenden and think, ‘My God, a change checklist is not enough.’ “How do you incorporate a completely different cultural change into attitudes?” Gittos asked. “There is not enough staff and the staff there is very scared to ask for help or to express concerns. “It does not make me feel very hopeful.” Hawkins said: “From Nottingham, our experience is that they say they will change, and they do not. All of this has been happening for years, it’s the same things that are highlighted and highlighted. “We are a growing group of bereaved, bereaved families and people are telling stories we can not even believe. We do not know what justice is. “But I feel that maybe we are getting to a place where people are finally listening to us.” A spokesman for Nottingham University Hospitals said: “We would like to reiterate our sincere apologies to Mr and Mrs Hawkins for failing to care for the baby Harriet’s childbirth. “The Maternity Improvement Program has introduced a number of improvements, including better training and monitoring with a renewed focus on recruiting and retaining midwives and maternity teams to ensure we provide the best possible services to every family we care for.” Sarah Shingler, head of nursing and obstetrics at East Kent Hospitals, said: “The death of a baby is a devastating experience for a family and our thoughts are with Mrs Gittos. We are truly sorry for the shortcomings in our care for her and baby Harriet. “Since then, we have made significant changes to the maternity service to improve the safety and quality of care for each family.”
