In November 2015 the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, announced a new national ambition to reduce the rate of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and intrapartum brain injuries in babies in England by 20% by 2020 and 50% by 2030, to ensure England is one of the safest places in the world to have a baby.
The safer maternity care action plan, designed to dramatically improve the safety of maternity care in the NHS, was announced by the Health Secretary on 17 October 2016.
In order to help Trust achieve this The Department of Health identified a training fund of £8million for NHS Maternity Services to bid for to improve the safety of their services.
UHMBT bid for £174,000 to be used across three sites; The Royal Lancaster Infirmary (RLI), Westmorland General Hospital (WGH) and Furness General Hospital (FGH).
The Trust have been successfully awarded £80k to be used across the three sites to further improve the safety of maternity services.
Linda Womack, Divisional General Manager for Women’s and Children’s at UHMBT said; “The Trust is delighted to have been granted £80,000. Improvements to safety will be achieved by incorporating traditional methods and programmes of learning with innovative, patient based co-designed training programmes along with the development of a simulation suite to underpin situational awareness, improved communication by all professionals who work with women and their families in maternity services as well as reflecting and learning from the impact of human factors. Working closely within the Strategic Partnership undertaking these workshops which would lead to an improved safety culture across the locality and region, providing consistency for all women using each of our services, supporting information flow and sharing that improves women’s experiences in services too.”