The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has called on the Government to act quickly and effectively to improve maternity safety, following a new report from the Care Quality Commission. Services should be better supported to learn not only from where things go wrong, but learning from best practice too.  

The CQC said they have seen examples of good maternity care and hardworking, compassionate staff doing their best during their inspections. However, key issues including unsuitable consulting and treatment rooms, a lack of access to essential equipment, a lack of oversight from Trust boards are all impacting the delivery of safe maternity care in England.

Gill Walton, Chief Executive of the RCM, said:

“Over the past decade we have read multiple reports of incidents in maternity services, where women and families have been let down by the level of service and care they have received. The themes in those reports, and in this latest one from the CQC, are the same: too few staff with the right training, too little time to care for and listen to women, and crumbling infrastructure that gets in the way of good care. Despite these recurrent themes, nothing has fundamentally changed. That’s why we’re calling on the Government to draw a line under this here and now, to work with us on resolving these problems and to build maternity services we can all be proud of.”

Ensuring timely and effective risk assessment at triage was also a concern highlighted in this report, the CQC reported some examples of good practice, but said issues with staffing and the triage environment resulted in delays for some women. The RCM says this is concerning but also indicative of the pressure some units are under.

Gill added:

“As a midwife, reading this report makes me both incredibly sad for every woman and family that hasn’t received the level of care they should and for every midwife and maternity support worker trying to do their best in a system that they feel is broken. It also makes me angry that, despite all the evidence, little has been done to resolve these issues effectively. Wes Streeting has said that maternity safety keeps him awake at night – me too. So let’s work together – the Government and the RCM, with those delivering care – to make it better.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors

• Between August 2022 and December 2023, CQC inspected 131 maternity units as part of a targeted programme to assess all hospital maternity locations that had not been inspected and rated since March 2021.
• The report is based on the findings from CQC’s targeted national inspection programme of all NHS maternity services in England that had not been inspected and rated prior to March 2021. It also draws on direct feedback received from people using maternity services and existing research.
• The RCM has supported the CQC to develop some additional resource materials for maternity services and their staff to support good practice and improvements where needed. These resources will be available at https://www.cqc.org.uk/maternity-improvement-resource
• More information on the work the RCM is doing to improve safety across UK maternity services can be found here: https://rcm.org.uk/
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