an independent review into the deaths of
babies at an nhs
trust has revealed a series of failures
including in some cases the blaming of
mothers for their babies dying
an inquiry was set up three years ago to
look at fatalities and injuries at
shrewsbury and telford trust between
2000
and 2018. it started by looking into 23
cases
of a baby dying or suffering brain
injury or of a mother's death
but the review has now expanded to
nearly 1900
cases which also include women or babies
who are injured during birth
in june this year a police the police
launched a criminal investigation
into whether there was enough evidence
to support a case against the trust
or against any of the individuals
involved social affairs correspondent
michael buchanan has been speaking to
two families whose children died
you read the story of a baby
and it died story of another baby and it
died
i physically felt sick as i read the
report
without these two families the appalling
care exposed today would not have been
revealed
both motivated by personal grief
in 2016 pippa griffiths died after staff
failed to act on her parents concerns
seven years earlier
kate stanton davies died after midwives
failed to properly monitor her
pippa should never have died we
campaigned
after kate's death for them to learn
from kate's death
if they had learned pippa would not have
died
i feel a huge weight of responsibility
that we didn't fight hard enough
for years the trust ignored them
insisted maternity care was good
today's findings based on an analysis of
250 cases between 2000 and 2018
shows how right the families were the
review says that mothers were blamed for
the deaths of their babies
there was a reluctance to carry out
caesarean sections often with
catastrophic consequences
thirteen women died in labour shortly
afterwards
higher than the england average some of
the deaths were never investigated
can you explain why it took
two families to highlight
these failures i can't explain that
i will be honest there have been days
where i've met family after family
and i meet them privately in shrewsbury
where i have sat down and cried because
as a fellow human being you can't do
anything other than that
the trust wouldn't take questions today
but did say they'd implement all
27 recommendations as the chief
executive of the trust now
i want to say personally and on behalf
of the trust
that we are very sorry for all of the
pain and distress
caused to these families the full report
into all 1862 cases before the review
will be published next year until then
these families will continue to push for
real improvements
when your children say to you
why are you doing this again mum why do
you put yourself through this
it's because we don't want many other
families
to go through the pain that we have
and that was kaylee griffith sending
that report by michael buchanan