‘They lied to all of us’: Families who lost babies due to maternity failings call for criminal prosecution

‘Fundamentally, they lied to all of us...there needs to be justice for the families involved here’ says Kelli Reynolds

Families failed by east Kent hospitals have called for criminal prosecution after a major inquiry found 45 babies may have died due to poor care.

Kelli Rudolph and Dunstan Lowe lost their daughter Celandine just five days after she was born at William Harvey Hospital in Ashford in 2016.

After being left for years without an answer the couple urged the government to seek criminal prosecutions for those responsible for the “catastrophic failures” revealed by the inquiry on Wednesday.

Bex Walton, who lost her son two days after being born, said sorry is not good enough (PA)

A report exposed failings at East Kent University Hospitals Trust may have contributed to 97 cases of death, harm or injury in women and babies, over a decade. Of these, the poor care may have led to the deaths of 45 babies.

Have you been impacted by poor maternity care in your area? contact rebecca.thomas@independent.co.uk

Ms Rudolph and Mr Lowe said the evidence gathered by the review would stand as a good basis should any criminal action be pursued.

“Leaders have to stop lying to people,” Ms Rudolph said. “You know, when they are negligent, they have to stop lying. Fundamentally, they lied to all of us… The evidence in this report is so overwhelming…there needs to be justice for the families involved here.

“It is for the courts to decide whether there is a criminal case to be answered here but I think there is a body of evidence that the bill has pulled together here that would be a good basis for any kind of investigation that was to arise.”

She added: “Forty-five, that’s a stark number to everybody in this period of time...45 babies’ avoidable deaths. When you sit there and think about that. What do 45 children look like in a classroom, in school? It’s two full classrooms.”

Danielle Clark’s son Noah now suffers from visual impairment and autism (PA)

Kent police launched a criminal investigation into East Kent maternity failings last year as revealed by The Independent.

Danielle Clark, mother to Noah, described the difficult labour and birth she went through at QEQM.

She said: “I had a son in 2013, I was induced but the reason I was induced was never communicated.

“The induction then took three days, I should have been offered an emergency C-section, but instead they gave me too much induction gel, over the Nice (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guidelines.

“He ended up in special care, in resuscitation. At eight weeks old he had to have emergency surgery because things had been missed, he wasn’t gaining weight, he was dying in front of our eyes basically.

“People need to be held accountable. Things have got to change, babies are dying just through bad care and pure neglect.”

Sarah and Tom Richford with their son Harry, who died seven days after he was born (Derek Richford/PA)

The east Kent review has urged the government to press ahead with the Public Authorities (accountability) legalisation – also called the Hillsborough law.

This is the second major maternity inquiry published this year and follows the Ockenden review which found 300 babies died needlessly or were brain damaged due to care failings.

Dr Bill Kirkup, who chaired the east Kent review and also chaired a review in 2015 into the Morecambe Bay scandal, said the failings in east kent were “deplorable and harrowing”.

He told the Independent: “I’m quite depressed about the inability of inquiries to change things.”

He said a culture of denial, was “widespread in the public sector, including in health” and warned there was a tendency to defend reputations, that this quickly passes over into “outright denial and cover-up” which he said was “particularly cruel in health.”

The east Kent inquiry review team found eight separate occasions over 10 years upon which NHS services locally and national regulators had the chance to improve and prevent further failings.

The report exposes a “pattern of defensiveness” from the NHS trust in the face of reports from the Royal College of Obstetricians and inspections from the Care Quality Commission.

Dr Bill Kirkup led the inquiry into East Kent maternity failings (PA)

The Department for Health and Social Care is yet to publish a detailed response however said in an initial comment pointed to £127 million in funding to help increase staffing in maternity services.

During a press conference, Dr Kirkup warned money alone would not be enough to address the issues nationally, and found in the review that short staffing and resource problems were not a direct cause of what happened in Kent.

East Kent Hospitals chief executive Tracey Fletcher said in a statement: "I want to say sorry and apologise unreservedly for the harm and suffering that has been experienced by the women and babies who were within our care, together with their families, as described in today’s report.

"These families came to us expecting that we would care for them safely, and we failed them.”