Reviews / 2016
Better Births: improving outcomes of maternity services in England
Baroness Cumberlege · work from 2015 · published 2016
What this was
National maternity review that followed Morecambe Bay. It proposed personalised care, continuity of carer, safer teams, and better data, as a five-year forward view for maternity.
Why it sits in the hub
Continuity of carer became a national target and was later hard to staff. Subsequent inquiries found that the safety basics Better Births assumed — listening, escalation, learning — were still missing.
Findings
Finding 1
Women wanted safer care and more continuity, and services were not organised around either.
Recommendations in this hub
Paraphrase of the public recommendations, not the official text.
- 1Partly doneMaternity services
Offer continuity of carer so that a woman knows the midwife looking after her.
The national target was later softened because the workforce could not sustain it everywhere.
- 2Partly doneLocal maternity systems
Make rapid, multi-professional learning from incidents routine.