Baroness Amos has published her interim report on maternity and neonatal services in England, with the next steps toward the final report being outlined.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting asked Baroness Amos to chair the investigation into maternity and neonatal services in August this year, with the aim being to urgently improve care and safety. The call for Baroness Amos came as families who were impacted by failings expressed there preference for the investigation chair to be someone who had some distance from the NHS, and thus able to bring a ‘fresh pair of eyes.’
The interim report has outlined a number of issues, with the ones that appear the most consistently including:
- Poor communication
- A lack of support for fathers and non-birthing fathers
- The impact of discrimination against women of colour, working class women, women with mental health challenges, and young parents
- A lack of empathy, care or apology as part of clinical care, or after things have gone wrong
- Poor standards of basic care, including cleanliness, women not receiving meals, or catheters not being checked or emptied
- A lack of recognition of, and support for, the impact of negative experiences on families.
Despite these failings – and a significant number of others – Baroness Amos did mention that she heard about the high-quality, compassionate care that some families received.
As part of the investigation, a wide range of people were spoken to, including frontline staff who discussed the pressures that they are under whilst working in maternity and neonatal services. According to the report, members of staff have had rotten fruit thrown at them, as well as others facing death threats after negative publicity and social media posts about the standard of maternity care in their particular unit.
These conversations outlined that many staff felt that the negative publicity about a unit, can have an impact on the delivery of high-quality care.
With interim findings being published, Baroness Amos has now outlined the next steps that will be taken as she works towards the publication of her final report in Spring 2026. Ahead of the final report, a further update will be published in February, with this bringing the initial findings of the investigation after all of the site visits have been concluded.
The remaining site visits to be undertaken will see the investigation heading to:
- Blackpool Teaching Hospitals Foundation NHS Trust
- University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust
- University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust
- Sandwell and Wes Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust
- University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust
The Royal College of Midwives has responded to the interim report, with RCM Chief Executive Gill Walton saying:
“Baroness Amos’ report paints a deeply distressing picture. Every woman and baby should have a positive experience of maternity care. Yet too many have experienced devastating consequences from systemic failings.
“Midwives are committed to safe, compassionate, woman-centred care but chronic understaffing and inadequate resources are undermining their ability to deliver it.
“The RCM has been raising concerns for years about these issues, the lack of urgency to improve maternity services and the absence of ring-fenced funding for improvements.
“Baroness Amos is right to ask why change has been ‘too slow’ when 748 recommendations have been made over the past decade. The Government already has the evidence it needs. It knows the scale of the challenge and the solutions that will make the biggest difference.
“We now hope to work constructively with the Government through the Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce to ensure these findings lead to meaningful action. Women, families, midwives and maternity teams have waited long enough for the safe, high-quality maternity services they deserve.”
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