Shropshire Star

'No more apologies': Mother demands action over Shropshire maternity scandal

A mother who fought to force an inquiry into maternity services at the county's major hospitals has said families need action not apologies.

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Baby Pippa with her family

Without Kayleigh Griffiths and her husband Colin, the inquiry into maternity care at Shrewsbury & Telford NHS Hospital Trust (SaTH) would never have taken place.

In 2017 the couple were two of the four signatories on a letter to the-then Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, outlining their concerns over 23 cases where babies had died or been seriously injured in the trust's care.

Kayleigh and Colin's daughter Pippa died on April 27, 2016, from a group b strep infection – the most common cause of meningitis in newborns.

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She was only one day old.

At an inquest SaTH admitted failings in the information provided to Kayleigh, which could have prevented her newborn daughter's death.

The trust also accepted that had questions been asked when Mrs Griffiths raised concerns to a midwife over the phone then Pippa would have been taken to hospital, in all likelihood leading to her receiving treatment and surviving.

The letter was jointly prepared with Rhiannon and Richard Stanton-Davies, who had suffered a harrowing series of failings over the death of their own daughter Kate – and then a protracted battle for official acceptance of what had happened.

Their call sparked Mr Hunt into ordering an inquiry, which is being carried out by maternity expert Donna Ockenden. Earlier this week devastating details of parents' experiences were revealed when an interim report was leaked.

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In the wake of the details SaTH issued an unreserved apology and said it had already taken action to improve its services, before the findings of the inquiry are released.

However, it has emerged that patient records of around 400 potential cases have not been handed over to the inquiry team by SaTH and NHS England.

Responding to the leaked report Kayleigh said: "I think what she has come up with is exactly what we have all been saying the trust has been doing, which is obviously horrific and needs addressing.

"But then I would also say the trust has just released the same statement they have always done.

"We do not need another apology, we need them to release the notes, provide Donna Ockenden's team with what they need, when they ask for it and stop delaying.

"Because if it is true there are families out there that do not know what has happened and they need to be informed."

Kayleigh, 32, from north Shropshire, said that absolute transparency is needed over all cases.

She said: "I think they just need to say okay, we admit that it has been absolutely horrific and we are going to release everything."

Kayleigh also said that the apologies meant little when previous statements had come to nothing.

She said: "I think it was something like 21 days before Pippa died that Simon Wright (SaTH's previous chief executive) promised that something like that would never happen again when he was talking about Kate, then Pippa died and the same failures that happened to Kate happened to us.

"Pippa did not need to die. She could easily have been saved."

Kayleigh said that the ongoing inquiry has taken its toll, but said she would not stop until it had uncovered the truth about the state of SaTH's maternity services.

She said: "We will go for months when nothing happens and you carry on as much of a normal life as you can in the circumstances, then this will hit with little notice and you have to go through everything again and again and it is not something you can rest with, we have fought this far, we are not going to stop."

She added: "We have got trust in Donna. We would ask that NHS I help her, give her the resources and make sure the notes are released because that front has been extremely slow.

"We have got faith in her to do the babies, the mothers and the families justice."

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