Less than half of staff at maternity scandal trust feel able to speak out

Staff at Shrewsbury were told not to speak to the inquiry, said Donna Ockenden

Donna Ockenden, chair of the independent review into maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, presented the final report on Wednesday (PA)

Less than half of staff at scandal-hit Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust feel they can speak up about concerns, according to a staff survey, as a damning report warned serious problems persist in maternity care.

Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust is one of the worst-performing trusts on the latest national survey of staff for the NHS.

It comes after Donna Ockenden, who chaired a review into maternity failures at the trust, said her “biggest concern” was that staff had been told not to share concerns with her inquiry.

The NHS staff survey, published on Wednesday, showed just 49 per cent of staff at the trust reported they would feel safe enough speaking up about concerns in 2021 – down from 53 per cent in 2020.

Meanwhile, just 34 per cent of staff said they feel their concerns would be addressed if there were to speak up.

The trust is one of the worst three hospital trusts in the country when it comes to rising care concerns, the figures show. Only United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust and Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust performed worse.

The staff survey findings came as the final report into the largest maternity scandal in the NHS found that almost 300 babies died or were harmed as a result of poor care at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust over 20 years.

Ockenden’s maternity review, also published on Wednesday, said that just 109 staff came forward with information and 11 withdrew as the report was being finalised.

Ms Ockenden told The Independent her biggest concern was “that ordinary staff on the ground are telling me they were advised not to cooperate with the Ockenden review”.

She said the issue had been raised with NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care, and twice in recent months with the trust’s chief executive Louise Barnett.

She said: “The vast majority of those withdrew because they said they were frightened that what they’d said could be linked back to them. Other colleagues came forward and said that the reason staff hadn’t come forward was number one, they’d been advised not to, number two, they were fearful of reprisals and number three, they were fearful of their jobs.”

The NHS Staff Survey covers a range of questions and around 46 per cent of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust’s staff answered the survey. Of those who answered the survey, 27 per cent were nurses or midwives.

Although there was an increase in staff reporting they would feel secure raising concerns about unsafe clinical practice from 62 per cent in 2020 to 67 per cent in 2021, it was still among the worst performing trusts on this question.

Just 19 per cent of staff said they felt there was enough staff to be able to perform their job properly.

The trust also had one of the lowest percentages of staff recommending it as a place to work with just 41 per cent saying they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement.

The news comes as wider concerns were raised about staff’s ability to speak up across the NHS. On Thursday a report by the National Guardian’s Office, which represents “Freedom to Speak Up” guardians in the NHS, said there were “warning signs” that more needed to be done to improve the NHS’s “speaking up” culture.

According to the survey of the 800 guardians, who are employed by NHS organisations, 62 per cent said there was a positive culture in their organisation with respect to speaking up. However, this has dropped by five percentage points in the last year.

There was also a drop of nine percentage points in the proportion of Freedom to Speak Up guardians who said their senior leaders support workers to speak up.

Dr Jayne Chidgey-Clark, national guardian for the NHS, said the result gave her “cause for concern”

She added: “Senior leaders should discuss the findings of this survey with their Freedom to Speak Up guardian, and their workers, and look at their plans to continue to improve the speak-up culture in their organisations.”

While Ms Barnett said: “We always encourage and enable colleagues to speak up and remind all our employees that they can raise any concerns through a number of channels confidentially – whether it’s about patient safety or their own personal welfare – and know that if they do, they will be supported, listened to and the appropriate actions will be taken.

“Through initiatives such as Freedom to Speak Up, an online platform for staff to anonymously raise issues, executive drop-in sessions, and wider cultural change work, we have made progress, but we know that significant improvements are still required to get to where we want to be.”