Bereaved dad meets senior health bosses over maternity care

A man whose son was stillborn has met with health bosses to see what improvements are being made at the hospital trust that oversaw the family's care.

Tom and Ewa Hender's son Aubrey was delivered in 2022 at the former City Hospital - now Midland Metropolitan University Hospital - run by Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust (SWBH).

The couple have been critical of the care they received. Their account formed part of a review - led by Baroness Amos and published in June - that raised concerns about the safety of women and babies at the trust. It cited heavy staff workloads and staff shortages, with patients said to be consistently experiencing discrimination and inconsistency in care.

Tom Hender on Thursday got together with NHS England's chief nursing officer and a Department of Health director as part of his efforts to advocate for improvements at the hospital, suggesting to the officials there needed to be further review of SWBH.

Aubrey was stillborn at 36 weeks and five days, an event which missed by two days the 37-week threshold which allows an independent investigation to be carried out into the individual circumstances surrounding such a death.

It remains the view of his parents - from Staffordshire - that they were not listened to by trust staff during their care, nor had their concerns taken seriously, When they tried to highlight that Aubrey's movements had lessened or seemed fainter, they felt dismissed.

They have said that as a result, their care did not feel safe.

Baroness Amos's review of SWBH, which heard the Henders' feedback, formed part of a national investigation that was launched in order to identify systemic issues affecting maternity services across England.

The probe revealed that SWBH's neonatal mortality rate exceeded that of similar trusts by more than 5%.

Explaining what he had gleaned from his meeting as to health chiefs' assessment of SWBH, Hender told the BBC: "We learned that the action that's ongoing at the trust today is that the maternity and neonatal improvement safety team are in the hospital with two senior obstetricians, two senior midwives, undertaking what's called a diagnostic phase, which means that they are currently based at the Midland Met Hospital trying to determine what improvements may be needed.

"[But] it was made clear that any improvement needs to be done with the trust on board because they need to implement it."

NHS England said it was providing "intensive improvement support" to maternity at SWBH and was determined to improve maternity nationally as well.

Hender said he and the bosses also discussed an ongoing review of all stillbirths at the hospital last year.

There were 33 stillbirths there in 2025, with SWBH saying all parents had been contacted and invited to share their experiences.

"We expressed our opinion that this [review] needs to be more in depth and cover previous years.," Hender said.

"I believe that NHS England will go away and discuss that with the trust."

He added: "We think it's important that people who are using the maternity services at Midland Met know what is happening so that they can choose to advocate for themselves."

SWBH said a significant improvement programme had been implemented.

This, it said, included the recruitment of 25 additional midwives, and the opening of a dedicated induction of labour suite, a well as "strengthened leadership, governance and oversight arrangements ongoing".

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