Call for medical notes alert for maternity scandal families

"She has worked to get a so-called "Ockenden alert" on her medical notes an idea which came out of meetings with other traumatised families. Donna Ockenden is the senior midwife who led the 2022 review which found more than 200 babies and nine mothers in Shropshire could have survived with better care. Mrs Grifiths wants the alert to be offered to more affected families, and eventually to people nationally."

"When she gave birth to him, he was temporarily taken to neonatal care, but she was not told this before being taken to see him. She said it was "so traumatising to see him like that". Thankfully, he was ok. But Mrs Griffiths said that "having that alert on our records would probably have stopped all of that, because people would have known at each stage of our care that we'd been through so much already"."

Kayleigh Griffiths lost her baby daughter, Pippa, in 2016 due to maternity failings; a coroner later ruled the death preventable. She campaigned to add an Ockenden alert to her medical records, an idea from meetings with other traumatised families, so clinicians see prior harm and avoid retraumatising patients. The 2022 Ockenden review found more than 200 babies and nine mothers in Shropshire could have survived with better care. Griffiths wants the alert offered more widely and nationally. She describes a later birth where her newborn was taken to neonatal care without prior warning, and Reverend Charlotte Cheshire seeks the alert for her disabled son.

Read at www.bbc.com