The numbers are as striking as they are horrific – about 2,500 families involved, 155 babies who may have survived with better care and 105 who suffered serious injury due to failings. But behind the statistics are the faces of the families who have been changed forever.
Jack Hawkins still remembers the shift from joy to devastation. In April 2016, he and his wife Sarah lost their daughter Harriet when she was stillborn at Nottingham City Hospital after intervention was repeatedly delayed. Harriet was delivered nine hours after dying; an external review concluded her death was “almost certainly preventable”.
“Families describe preventable deaths and systemic failings in NHS’s largest maternity scandal involving 2,500 cases.”
The inquiry led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden, whose findings have finally been made public, said Harriet’s death “was compounded by a systemic cover-up and investigations designed to mislead, which took a profound toll on the couple’s wellbeing”. Ockenden called Jack and Sarah’s fight for the truth “a watershed moment” and “the patient safety catalyst for the Nottingham maternity review”.
Jack told the BBC: “My God, you know, how on earth are you supposed to deal with the change in life from such excitement to utter emptiness?”
Gary and Sarah Andrews lost their daughter Wynter on 15 September 2019, 23 minutes after she was delivered by Caesarean section. Repeated warning signs of distress had been missed. Gary recalled: “One clinician sat down and said they’d looked over all the notes and they couldn’t see anything wrong and if they listened to every mother’s concerns the hospital would be overrun.”
Wynter was delivered “in poor condition” with the umbilical cord “wrapped tightly around her leg and neck”. Efforts to resuscitate her were abandoned 23 minutes later. An inquest in October 2020 found she may have survived if “multiple missed opportunities” had been spotted by staff.
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has apologised to all those affected and said it was committed to making improvements. But the families now want more – a statutory public inquiry. The Ockenden report graded 520 cases of mothers and babies as 2 or 3 for harm, where grade 2 represents “significant concerns” and grade 3 “major concerns” over care. Grade 2 means sub-optimal care where different management might have made a difference; grade 3 is where different management would reasonably be expected to have made a difference.
For Jack and Sarah, and for Gary and Sarah, the fight for answers continues – a decade-long battle that has left them with a question that can never be fully answered: what if?