An audit has been published by Sands, Stillbirth and neonatal death charity, and Bliss, for babies born premature and sick. It reveals that most services lack sufficient specialist staffing input and appropriate facilities to support grieving families. The report finds that despite instances of good practice by individual nurses and doctors across the country, many services are not set up to deliver consistent high quality bereavement care and health professionals are not getting the training and support they need to perform this vital role.Re
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Recent research has shown that having a first baby in your 30s can raise the risk of breast cancer for more than two decades. Five years after giving birth mothers are 80 per cent more likely to get breast cancer than childless women the same age and the risk is higher for those who start families later.
England’s chief inspector of hospitals is calling for a change in culture within the NHS to reduce the number of patients who experience avoidable harm. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) found that too many people are being injured or suffering unnecessary harm because NHS staff are not supported by sufficient training, and because the complexity of the current patient safety system makes it difficult for staff to ensure that safety is an integral part of everything they do.
The National Bereavement Care Pathway programme, has published the wave 2 interim (baseline) evaluation report. The report, written by external evaluators Fiveways (www.fivewaysnp.com) follows on from the publication of the wave 1 (baseline) interim report in April of this year.
There were an estimated 50,100 excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2017/18 – the highest recorded since winter 1975/76, figures from the Office for National Statistics show. The number of winter deaths last year was at the highest level in more than 40 years after the failure of the flu jab.
There should be as big a focus on mental health as physical health in order to reduce the number of suicides, the health, social care and sport committee of Wales have said. The number of men who die by suicide should be considered a “national emergency” the AMs added. Last year, 278 men of 360 people took their own lives in Wales – the highest figure since 1981. 31 recommendations in a report on suicide prevention have been made and are being considered by the Welsh Government.
The National Assembly for Wales’ Public Accounts Committee has agreed to undertake an inquiry in to how two Tawel Fan inquiries could reach such different conclusions regarding the allegations of poor care, abuse and falsifying patient care records. Mental health services at the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board are to be examined as the AM’s stated that the families of the patients affected “must be able to have confidence that the historic failings and current shortcomings in mental health care are being urgently addressed.”
The Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) has been in special measures for more than three years and Vaughan Gething AM (cabinet secretary for health and social care) and Aberconwy AM Janet Finch-Saunders have had a debate in the Senedd about progress.
Donna Ockenden has been nominated to receive a Chichester City Council civic award in recognition of the contribution she has made to life in the city. The formal presentation will be hosted by the Mayor and will take place at the Assembly Rooms in early February 2019.
A year ago the national bereavement care pathway was launched with 11 Wave 1 pilot sites. Now, a further 21 sites are live as part of wave 2 with more to follow. This milestone has been marked with the publication of the NBCP external evaluation conducted by Fiveways Research. Additionally, updated materials for professionals to use in all sites in England are also now available.
Stillbirth rates have declined by 20% over the Saving Babies’ Lives Care Bundles period (but the change cannot specifically relate to the SBLCB interventions) in participating Trusts. Significant variation in the stillbirth rate persists across the early adopter Trusts, but it was not possible to determine whether this was due to the implementation of SBLCB. However, due to the nature of the interventions it is highly plausible that it contributed to the continued improvement in stillbirth rate.
A report by NHS Digital, into the study of mental health in children and young people suggests hundreds of thousands of toddlers have mental health problems, with one in 18 suffering a disorder. The rate rose to one in ten as children went through primary school and one in seven during secondary education. By late teens the figure was one in six. NHS Digital’s study is the first survey into children’s mental health in England since 2004 and includes two to four-year-olds for the first time.