Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to (a) reduce and (b) improve bereavement support for families impacted by baby loss.

Since 2010, the stillbirth rate has reduced 19.3%, the neonatal mortality rate for babies born over the 24-week gestational age of viability has reduced by 36%, and the proportion of babies born preterm has reduced from 8% in 2017 to 7.7% in 2021. Where progress to reduce adverse outcomes has been slower, we have introduced several targeted interventions to accelerate progress, such as the introduction of the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle and the Brain Injury Reduction Programme.

In 2022, the Government announced a £127 million investment into the maternity system in 2022 to help increase the National Health Service maternity workforce and improve neonatal care. The Department also announced as part of the Women’s Health Strategy that it would work to introduce pregnancy loss certificates in England for those impacted by baby loss.

The Government funded the Stillbirths and Neonatal Death charity to work with other baby loss charities and Royal Colleges to produce and support the roll-out of a National Bereavement Care Pathway. The pathway covers a range of circumstances of a baby loss including miscarriage, stillbirth, termination of pregnancy for medical reasons, neonatal death and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. As of 1 January 2023, 108 NHS England trusts (84%) have committed to adopting the nine NBCP standards.