Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support maternity services.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Our programme of transformation in maternity services will make the National Health Service one of the best places in the world to give birth by supporting maternity services to deliver safer more personalised care for mothers and babies.
The NHS Long Term Plan built on the progress to implement the findings of the national maternity review set out in ‘Better Births’ in 2016, and commits us to continue to work with midwives, mothers and their families to implement the ‘continuity of carer’ recommendation. This will mean that, by March 2021, most women will receive continuity of the person caring for them during pregnancy, during birth and postnatally. Within this, 75% of women from black and minority ethnic groups and disadvantaged communities will have continuity of carer by the end of 2023-24, as the evidence suggests that it particularly improves outcomes for this group.
We also aim to improve safety by rolling out the Saving Babies’ Lives Care Bundle to every maternity unit in England in 2019. The Bundle supports services in reducing still births, with a new focus on preventing pre-term birth. Every trust in England with a maternity and neonatal service is now part of the National Maternal and Neonatal Health Safety Collaborative, which is supporting practical improvements to make care safer in all maternity units. Through this, we are supporting a culture of multidisciplinary team working and learning, vital for safe, high-quality maternity care. By 2022-23 pre-term birth clinics, Fetal Medicine Services and Maternal Medicine Networks will be rolled out nationally to provide access to more specialist expertise to women, babies and the clinicians caring for them.
To underpin the improvements to care, the NHS Long Term Plan committed to the digitisation of maternity information so that by 2023-24 all women will be able to access their maternity notes and information through their smart phones or other devices.
In March 2018, the Department announced plans to train more than 3,000 extra midwives over four years. The Government is providing extra funding for clinical placement costs for 650 students in 2019-20 with planned increases of 1,000 in the subsequent years. The Maternity Workforce Strategy was published in March 2019 by Health Education England to outline how the requirements of Better Births and the ambition to halve stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths by 50% by 2025, would be met. This will be achieved through retaining experienced and skilled maternity staff, as well as supporting employers to upskill and develop their workforces through new roles and new ways of working. This includes rolling out the ‘Maternity Support Worker’ role with a national competency, education and career framework; and new routes to becoming a registered midwife, including via apprenticeships.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of funding additional domestic medical student places to meet growing NHS demand in (a) Cumbria and Lancashire and (b) England.
Answered by Steve Barclay
The Government has announced a near record increase of an additional 1,500 medical school places for domestic students in England – 630 started this September, with a further 690 starting in 2019/20 and the final 180 in 2020/21. This expansion will also deliver five brand new medical schools in Sunderland, Lancashire, Chelmsford, Lincoln and Canterbury. This has meant an additional 171 places for domestic students in the North West, 81 of which started this September.
On the back of the additional £20 billion additional National Health Service funding, NHS leaders are currently producing a long-term plan that will include proposals for the NHS workforce, training and leadership, which the Government will consider and respond to in due course.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure adequacy funding for the final stage of construction of the West Cumberland Hospital.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The West, North and East Cumbria Sustainability and Transformation Project has made an application for funding for the West Cumberland scheme from the additional £325 million capital funding announced in the spring budget earlier this year. An announcement on the successful applications will be made shortly.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what support his Department gives to NHS trusts and hospitals to improve the recruitment and retention of (a) maternity unit, (b) paediatric unit and (c) other hospital staff.
Answered by Philip Dunne
National Health Service trusts are responsible for the recruitment and retention of their workforce to ensure safe staffing levels. There are no specific, separate programmes for maternity and paediatric units. The Department commissions Health Education England (HEE) to work with the NHS to ensure there is sufficient future supply of staff to meet the workforce requirements of the NHS in England. Details are in its Workforce Plan for England 2016-171.
The NHS is employing more clinical staff than ever before with, for example, 307,491 nurses, midwives and health visitors (up by more than 7,000 since 2010) and HEE has over 52,000 nurses in training with forecasts for more than 40,000 additional nurses by 2020. It will be for NHS trusts to work with HEE, nurses and other clinical staff to decide how their careers develop. This could include specialising in maternity, paediatrics or other hospital services.
The number of nurses providing “early life” care which includes maternity and paediatric services is 24,446 full time equivalents (March 2017), a rise of 3,250 (15.3%) since 2010.
The Department commissions NHS Improvement to lead the national programme to develop and deliver NHS safe staffing improvement resources for specific care settings which would include maternity, paediatric and other hospital services. NHS Improvement is working with trusts to support the development of trust improvement plans for retaining their clinical workforce through, for example, ensuring trusts demonstrate leadership and culture support, and nurture staff in an environment of continuous learning for the benefit of patients.
The Department is also leading work with NHS England, HEE and others to do more to retain clinical staff through, for example, working with the NHS to improve opportunities for flexible working. The Department is also working with the Care Quality Commission to see how staff welfare issues can be included in hospital inspections so progress can be tracked.
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