Quality surveillance and governance

There have been several reports published over the last decade that have focused on the importance of truly listening to service users, and talked about the need for more transparency, honesty and reflective learning to happen when things go wrong in maternity and neonatal services.

Ockenden Report

Since December 2020, a large focus in our work has been the Ockenden Review and the two subsequent reports. These reports followed an independent review of maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, leading to several national actions to improve maternity services and make them safer.

Many of the recommendations put Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnerships and service user representation at the heart of quality surveillance and safety. By embedding the service user voice within quality surveillance work locally these recommendations can be implemented and we can ensure the feedback from families is truly influential in making changes to improve care.

Our work locally

We continue to develop and embed our involvement in quality surveillance and governance across Dorset’s Local Maternity and Neonatal System to support the system to continue to develop and ensure a transparent safety culture.

We are now involved in more regular meetings and forums where we share the insight and intelligence gathered through our engagement work and provide critical friendship and challenge through a service user lens; we are part of visits to services for both NHS Trusts, to assess progress against the actions needed; and we are involved in more coproduction work.