Parents meet Health Secretary as they advance calls for maternity improvements

Katie Fowler and Robert Miller were invited to meet Wes Streeting to discuss their experience of maternity care and why improvements are so urgent.

Following the meeting, at the Department for Health and Social Care in London, the couple reported feeling “positive and hopeful” and that Mr Streeting appeared “engaged and willing to listen”.

Previously, when Katie wrote to Mr Streeting to request a meeting, his department’s response left her “disappointed and frustrated” and calling for “action, not just words”. However, she said she was encouraged by his response to them in person.

Katie and Rob’s daughter Abigail died at only two days old, after errors in care from the Maternity Assessment Unit at the Royal Sussex County Hospital when Katie went into labour.

After four phone calls, Katie went into cardiac arrest on the journey from her home in Brighton to the hospital, and an emergency caesarean was performed in a waiting room of the hospital. Katie herself almost died, and was woken from her coma two days later to say goodbye to her daughter.

The traumatic circumstances in which they lost Abigail – whose life a Coroner said would have been “significantly prolonged” had she and her mother received better standards of care – have seen Katie and Rob become vocal and passionate advocates for the need for maternity care to improve.

They specifically want to see urgent improvements at University Hospitals Sussex, which manages the Royal Sussex and have requested that Mr Streeting instructs an independent review of a number of baby deaths due to failings in the Trust’s maternity services.

They are also committed to raising standards nationally, to help other parents avoid the devastation they have faced, including the introduction of national guidelines for maternity telephone triage in England.

Reflecting on their meeting, which was attended by several other parents who have lost children due to poor care in NHS maternity services, they said they hope Mr Streeting follows through with his commitment to make urgently-needed change.

“He told us that maternity is an absolute priority for him and that changes are coming. While we wait to see what they entail, we felt the meeting went well,” says Katie.

“He listened to us all and is going to follow up on the points we raised. He seemed engaged and genuinely concerned by what is happening in maternity care, so we are hopeful that improvements will be made.

“We look forward to hearing more from Mr Streeting about maternity care at University Hospitals Sussex and nationally.”

Nisha Sharma, principal lawyer at Slater and Gordon, acts for Katie and Rob in their fight for justice against University Hospitals Sussex, and is herself a vocal advocate for maternity improvements.

“We are very pleased that the Health Secretary has taken the time to meet Katie and Rob and to understand their pain, grief and anger at what they have been through, and continue to experience every day,” she says.

“Until you sit down with someone and hear their heartbreaking experience and raw emotions, you cannot truly understand, so it is good news that Mr Streeting has done this.

“However, while we are very pleased that Katie and Rob are encouraged by his response, we would echo calls for him now to show that action and not just words are his priority. Maternity standards are at a dangerously low level and mothers and babies continue to come to harm.

“We really hope Mr Streeting and his team will now act on what they have heard and make the long overdue changes to NHS maternity provision which will save other families from the trauma that Katie and Rob and so many other families have experienced.”