IWG
Independent Maternity and Neonatal Working Group
Maternity safety is dependent on a multidisciplinary team working well together. To reflect this, and as part of the recommendations of the 2022 Ockenden report, a number of professional bodies, representing those working in maternity and neonatal services, has been brought together to build on and amplify good practice.
What is the IWG?
The Independent Maternity and Neonatal Working Group was established in August 2022 in response to Donna Ockenden’s independent report into maternity and neonatal services at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Hospitals NHS Trust. That report stated that:
‘The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England and Improvement (NHSEI) must now commission a working group – independent of the Maternity Transformation Programme – that has joint Royal College of Midwives (RCM) and Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) leadership to make plans to guide the Maternity Transformation Programme around implementation of these immediate and essential actions (IEAs) and the recommendations of other reports currently being prepared.’
In February 2024, the DHSC and NHSE as commissioned the Independent Working Group (IWG-Maternity and Neonatal) to work with them on the response to the Kirkup Reading the Signals Independent Report into maternity and neonatal services at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust to deliver a number of key actions to support implementation by NHSE.
Aims
To have best practice, barriers, concerns and ideas documented for the benefit of the system and disseminated for use in maternity care across the NHS.
To be able to have frontline staff voices, noting the need for diversity of representation, to inform the government’s response to the Kirkup East Kent Report recommendations 2 and 3.
To be able to identify areas where additional work is required to address barriers to enable successful implementation of the recommendations, which need to be commissioned by DHSC.
