The trust running Nottingham's major hospitals says it will improve how it deals with families involved in the maternity services review after complaints of "superficial" apologies. It has been confirmed that the team reviewing Nottingham's maternity units will have access to the records of 1,700 families because of a change to how the inquiry is managed.
People will now have to officially 'opt out' of the review, rather than the system up to now which has seen families coming forward to be involved. The news was confirmed at the annual public meeting of the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) on Monday (July 10).
With the review ongoing, the meeting also heard that NUH will now be working with families to offer them a "meaningful" apology for maternity failings. The review was launched after more than a hundred families contacted the Government asking for it.
Which Nottinghamshire road is the worst for heavy traffic? Let us know in our poll here.
Failings have included the case of Wynter Andrews, heard in court earlier this year, which saw NUH being fined £800,000. NUH apologised at the time to Wynter's family and managers have issued broader apologies over the last year to all those affected by maternity failings.
But speaking about how that approach will change, NUH Chief Executive Anthony May said ahead of the meeting: "When we apologise as a trust, sometimes the words can be received as not meaningful and a bit superficial. What [the families] would like to do instead is work with us to shape an apology that means something to most of the families affected by this."
Mr May said the "tone and language" used by NUH in previous apologies have not always been well received by families and that it therefore needed to "step back." In putting together a meaningful apology with the families, Mr May said NUH would wait for some of the initial findings of Donna Ockenden's review to come out, meaning that this apology may take a while.
Ms Ockenden, who previously led a review into maternity services in Shrewsbury and Telford, spoke at the meeting about some of the stories she had heard from families. She mentioned the story of one mum whose baby is so poorly that she "regularly" questions if it would have been better for them to pass away.
Ms Ockenden said: "Behind every number is a family who has suffered... I know there are local families struggling to provide 24 hour care for brain damaged babies.
"I know that there are little boys and girls out there in Nottinghamshire without their mummy." Speaking earlier at the meeting, Ms Ockenden said she had seen "positive changes in response to families accounts."
But she added: "The trust has a very long journey ahead. What has happened cannot be fixed overnight."
Mr May also described NUH as having a "mountain to climb." Speaking before the meeting, he said: "Some families have been concerned about what happened to them and their loved ones for some years.
"What they say to me is that either the processes we use to investigate these things are not transparent, they feel they're not done well, or just our basic communication with the families is poor. We don't listen to what they say, sometimes they say [we] weren't listening when things were happening to them."
Mr May added that the greater number of families now involved in the review would "inevitably" affect the capacity of Donna Ockenden and her review team. He therefore said NUH would wait to see when Ms Ockenden may be ready to publish her findings before working with families later this year on when a meaningful apology would be most appropriate.
Speaking about his hopes for the review, he added: "Every maternity unit that we're in touch with is experiencing similar problems around recruitment and retention and demand on their services. Let's hope it's not only something for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, but something that's much broader."
