The CQC published the results of its annual maternity survey this week. Women were surveyed after giving birth in February last year.

You can download our report on the website.

Chief Nurse Kathryn Halford said: "We are disappointed with the results of this survey and apoligse to any woman whose exprience giving birth with us was not as it should have been.

“It’s important we listen to women’s concerns and we’re working closely with our Maternity Voices Partnership (MVP) to gather and act on feedback.

“Covid restrictions in operation when it took place meant partners and families weren’t able to spend as much time with new mothers. We understand women’s concerns about this and visiting hours have since been reinstated.

“I was pleased to see positive comments in areas including women receiving supportive information on topics including pregnancy, feeding and induced labour to help them feel more prepared, and mothers being put at ease by staff who knew their full medical history. And that changes we have made following our Ockenden review were recognised.”

Some improvements already underway include:

• More support for women for whom English is not their first language, including remote access interpreting during consultations, and our MVP is working on ensuing women from minority ethnic backgrounds with more complex needs are supported by a bi-lingual volunteer.
• Monthly checks to ensure staff are supporting women to make their own informed decisions.
• Reinstated antenatal classes following a pause during the pandemic.
• More resource for our infant feeding team.
• We have an action plan in place to improve safety and choice for women. This followed our Ockenden review visit – the review made recommendations in the wake of the failure of maternity services over many years at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust.

Along with the rest of the NHS, we are also affected by national shortage of midwives and are working hard to recruit more. We’ve had 39 new midwives join our team in the last year, with five more due to start by the end of next month. We will also soon be joined by a further seven international midwives.

To provide the most up-to-date experiences of women using our maternity services, we will be doing quarterly replica surveys.