Families welcome chance to report maternity failings

The parents of babies who died after maternity failings in Nottingham have welcomed the chance to report staff to regulators.

The General Medical Council (GMC) and Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) will meet with families for the first time on Tuesday.

The watchdogs are responsible for the conduct of doctors, nurses and midwives, respectively.

Paul Rees, interim chief executive and registrar at the NMC, said he hoped the surgeries would "provide families with the opportunity to tell [both regulators] about their concerns".

Kim Errington, whose son Teddy died at Nottingham City Hospital in 2020 when he was a day old due to "undoubted failings" by healthcare professionals, said she was relieved meetings were taking place.

Ms Errington, 41, from Sherwood, Nottingham, urged other families to share their experiences and said it must not be "a box-ticking exercise".

She added: "I would like them to join the dots and put the work in to start building a picture of people, names, departments and management, [including] the different themes that crop up, and work out if there is a pattern, and if that's the case, we can prevent it happening again in the future.

"I think action should be taken against any professional whose actions or behaviours don't come up to scratch."

An additional day of meetings will take place on 14 May, while the GMC said future opportunities for families to express their concerns were "likely".

The visits are separate to the independent review being led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden into the failings at maternity units at the Queen's Medical Centre and Nottingham City Hospital.

Dr Jack and Sarah Hawkins, whose daughter Harriet was stillborn after almost 41 weeks of pregnancy at Nottingham City Hospital in April 2016, said the meetings were "long overdue".

Ms Hawkins said: "I think one of the frustrations families have at the minute is that regulators haven't been there for us.

"We feel like they have been absent, and it's been down to the families to advertise who they are and what their role is, when really they should have been here before the start of the review to ensure patient safety."

The watchdog said it had sent a letter to the families involved in the maternity review in Nottingham to hear about their experiences and discuss any concerns.

A GMC spokesperson said: "We have ongoing engagement with a number of affected families, so our letter is particularly aimed at those we have not yet heard from, asking if they would like to attend an in-person meeting with us, so we can hear about their experiences and where they can discuss their concerns relating to the doctors involved in their care."

Mr Rees, of the NMC, added: "We are committed to meeting with families to ensure they receive the support, insight and communication they need, and the surgeries are one of the ways we hope to do this.

"We'll listen and work with families to ensure our engagement meets their needs."

The Ockenden review, which has been described as the largest investigation ever carried out into maternity failings in NHS history, has examined 2,297 cases of harm to babies and women since September 2002.

Findings are set to be published in June 2026.

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