Forty charities have joined forces to launch this year’s Baby Loss Awareness Week, from October 9-15, by drawing attention to the shocking statistic about childbirth that fewer than half (46%) of maternity units in the UK provide mandatory bereavement care training and one in three Health Trusts and Boards dies not have dedicated bereavement rooms in each maternity unit.
The loss of a child is one of the greatest pains anyone can face and yet while 15 babies are stillborn in the UK every day the bereavement support available to grief-stricken parents varies drastically depending on location.
Poles Apart
The importance of these services is made all too clear in the very different stillbirth experiences recounted in a 2014 survey entitled Listening to Parents by a research unit at Oxford University, on maternal and infant health around birth.
“I feel that I should have been offered the chance to bathe and dress my baby,” said one respondent. “I think someone from Bereavement Services should have come sometime after the birth to talk through these things that you need to do but can’t think for yourself or don’t know enough about them to ask.”
One mother who did receive better support said a private space made a huge difference after a tragedy such as a stillbirth. “The hospital have a specific bereavement room,” she said. “We could spend as much time as we wanted with our baby.”
Another said the support was invaluable. “We were perfectly cared for and didn’t want to leave and return to all the extra pain awaiting us in the ‘real world’ such as an empty car seat and nursery and people who didn’t know what had happened or how fragile we were and sometimes still are. Our care was so excellent and well thought-out. Taking photos seemed a bad idea at first but are now priceless treasures.”
Overdue Standards
The report said that fewer than half of respondents who took a bereavement room said it was located away from crying babies and just 45% said they were away from women in labour, two factors which are of key importance to helping bereaved parents.
Some 17% of respondents said their partner could not stay in the room and 19% said they could not be with their baby there.
Baby Loss Awareness Week is now calling for a higher standard of bereavement care in all hospitals with a member of staff responsible for baby death bereavement support. Organisers insist there should be bereavement rooms in all hospitals, and that all health and social care professionals should receive bereavement care training.
Dr Clea Harmer, chief executive of the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death charity, said the things being demanded were long overdue. “Despite claims that it is a priority there is still a shortage of dedicated bereavement rooms and too few health care professionals are getting the essential training they need to sensitively support grieving parents,” she said.
“Good bereavement care is rooted in simple acts of kindness and respect, giving a family whose world has fallen apart the time they need with their baby and minimising anything that could add to their suffering. So it is very worrying that parents have told us they can hear the sounds of crying babies, and mothers and fathers congratulating each other on the birth of their healthy babies while they grieve.”
by Stewart Vickers
The post NHS: Forces Gather for Childbirth Support appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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