INSECURE, UNCLEAN AND UNSAFE CONDITIONS FOR BABIES AT SWANSEA BAY MATERNITY UNIT
Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) has issued a long-awaited report following an inspection of the maternity unit at Singleton Hospital in Swansea.
This follows an announcement by the Labour Health Minister on Tuesday 12 December that she was escalating Swansea Bay maternity services to ‘enhanced monitoring’, following pressure from the Welsh Conservatives at First Minister’s Questions and questions to the Health Minister in November off the back of concerns from affected families.
https://www.hiw.org.uk/system/files/2023-12/07092024%20-%20Singleton%20Hospital%2C%20EN_0.pdf
Commenting, Welsh Conservative Shadow Health Minister, Russell George MS said:
Both the Labour Health Minister and First Minister previously failed to say that maternity services in the Swansea Bay area are safe and now with the publication of this report, we can see exactly why.
It’s clear from HIW’s findings that enhanced monitoring arrangements are unlikely to be enough to fix these issues, so I am reiterating Welsh Conservative calls for a full independent inquiry of maternity services and the Labour Welsh Government’s handling of this situation.”
In a joint statement, Welsh Conservative local Senedd Members for South Wales West, Dr Altaf Hussain MS and Tom Giffard MS added:
It is truly heartbreaking to read a report into maternity services in Swansea that describes babies as being in insecure, unclean and unsafe conditions. Families deserve so much better than the situation described by HIW.
Staffing levels are evidently a key concern, so what Singleton Hospital needs are more doctors and nurses, yet the Labour Government would rather spend £120 million sending 36 more politicians to Cardiff Bay.”
HIW found that there were issues with safe staffing levels not always being met, low levels of mandatory training compliance and inadequate security measures to ensure babies were kept safe and secure.
HIW identified issues regarding many aspects of the delivery of safe and effective care within the unit. Inspectors were not assured that the processes and systems in place were sufficient to ensure that patients were consistently receiving an acceptable standard of care.
Arrangements for maintaining cleanliness, routine checking of essential lifesaving equipment, safe storage of medicines and safety issues relating to the hospital environment were also described as being insufficient.
Some of the women HIW spoke to on the postnatal ward indicated that when they required pain relief, it was not always administered in a timely manner, which they believed was due to staffing shortages and high workloads.
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