Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to increase support for families who have suffered baby loss.

The Government is working to improve the care and support received by families who experience baby loss. The Department has provided funding to Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity, to work with other baby loss charities and Royal Colleges to produce the National Bereavement Care Pathway (NBCP) to reduce the variation in the quality of bereavement care provided by the National Health Service.

The NBCP helps professionals to support families in their bereavement after any pregnancy or baby loss, be that miscarriage (including ectopic and molar pregnancy), termination of pregnancy for fetal anomaly, stillbirth, neonatal death or sudden unexpected death in infancy. In October 2018, all of the NBCP guidance materials and tools were published online.

In addition, NHS England’s Perinatal Mental Health Team has been working with Sands to ensure that the NBCP guidelines effectively signpost universal mental health screening and referral to evidence-based interventions and support.

Furthermore, the Pregnancy Loss Review which the Department commissioned earlier this year, has been considering the question of whether legislation should provide new rights to bereaved parents to register pregnancy loss occurring before 24 weeks gestation, as well as investigating the impact of such losses on families and how care can be improved for parents who experience this. The review has been widely consulting with parents, charities and medical professionals and is currently scheduled to be completed in early 2019.