In November 2024, a cross-party House of Lords Committee published the findings of an inquiry which considered the incidence and impact of preterm birth in England. Bliss gave both oral and written evidence to the Committee, and their report reflected many of our priorities including the need for improved parent accommodation and more consistent access to psychological support for families.
The Preterm birth: Reducing risk and improving lives report painted a picture which was all too familiar to parents and neonatal staff alike. Being born early can have a lifelong impact on babies, long after the initial stress and interventions of a neonatal admission have passed. For parents, a premature birth and subsequent neonatal stay is often marked by separation, anxiety, and financial pressure. The report showed that the experience of preterm birth and the impact of a neonatal stay disproportionately impacts families based on ethnicity and deprivation and recommended that ending these inequalities must be at the heart of the Government’s approach to change.
Today, 14th January 2025, the Government has responded to the recommendations made in the report. Bliss welcomes the Government’s acknowledgement of the significant challenges facing maternity and neonatal services. However, it is now essential that they act on the recommendations and provide the funding required to drive much-needed improvements, in particular to reduce disparities in neonatal outcomes.
We support the Government’s focus in their response on inequalities, particularly those experienced by Black and Asian mothers and babies, and those from deprived backgrounds. Tacking the higher rates of preterm birth and disparities in experience and outcomes in these communities must be the starting point for all improvement work in maternity and neonatal care. We look forward to seeing the results of ongoing work to develop actions to tackle these issues and hope to see clearly defined ambitions and targets to guide future work in this area. A valuable starting point would be for the NIHR Maternity Disparities Challenge Research Fund to have more of a focus on neonatal outcomes and disparities, alongside those facing mothers.
As highlighted in the Committee report, a significant barrier to parent involvement in care is the persistent and routine separation of babies from their parents at night on neonatal units because there is nowhere for parents to stay with their babies. We urge NHS England to publish the findings of the Estates Review swiftly, so that solutions can be developed. If the separation of parents and babies is ever going to end, we must see ambitious commitments in the 10 Year Plan for the NHS when it is published later this year. While we acknowledge that the scale of change needed in this area means that transformation of NHS estates will be long-term, we urge the Government to consider interim measures such as a small grants fund to provide Trusts with the resources they need to make smaller, but highly impactful, improvements in the shorter term to enable more parents to stay overnight with their babies in neonatal care.
We are pleased to see areas such as the development of neonatal outreach and psychological support services highlighted in the Government’s response, but these areas also require concerted effort at national level to implement and improve these services consistently across the country. Every baby and parent must have access to these services, and we’d like to see more detail on how NHS England will hold Integrated Care Boards and Trusts to account on the delivery of this vital support.
Bliss Chief Executive, Caroline Lee-Davey, said: “In November, Bliss fully endorsed the recommendations of the Committee. Today we welcome the Government’s support for the report and its recommendations.
“It is now imperative that the Government builds on this positive direction of travel by ensuring that the way forward on important areas like reducing inequalities, improving parent accommodation, and ensuring consistency of access to neonatal outreach and psychological support is laid out clearly in the forthcoming NHS 10 Year Plan, and that funding for this important area of healthcare is found in the comprehensive spending review later this year.”
