Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department plans to take to improve bereavement care following miscarriage or stillbirth.

The Department is funding Sands, the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death charity, to work with other baby loss charities and Royal Colleges to produce a National Bereavement Care Pathway to reduce the variation in the quality of bereavement care provided by the National Health Service. The pathway will cover a range of circumstances of a baby loss including: miscarriage, stillbirth and termination of pregnancy for medical reasons, and neonatal death. The Wave 1 pilot scheme of the pathway was launched in 11 pilot sites in October 2017, and the intention is for a national roll-out in October 2018.

In addition, NHS England produced guidance for Local Maternity Systems to implement the Better Births recommendations. It provides advice on how to implement key deliverables for Local Maternity Systems and details on key issues and complementary work that may be required to support these deliverables. In doing so, it mentions the importance of Local Maternity Systems to consider bereavement care. By the end of October 2017, every part of England will have a plan to implement Better Births recommendations.

In June 2017, NHS England published ’Gathering feedback from families following the death of their baby’. This is a resource being used across England to improve bereavement care by supporting Local Maternity Systems to seek feedback from families when bereavement occurs and to use the insight to commission bereavement services that are fit for purpose.