Sussex maternity review to examine cases from 2018

After years of pressure from harmed and bereaved families, the government has confirmed what the independent maternity review in Sussex will actually be allowed to look at. The review, led by Donna Ockenden, will examine maternity and neonatal services at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, often shortened to UHSx. Neonatal care means care for newborn babies, so this is about the safety of both mothers and babies. If you are wondering why the word 'scope' matters, it is because scope decides who is included, which harms are counted and how far investigators can go. In plain terms, this announcement is not the review itself. It is the rule-setting stage that tells families whether their experiences are finally going to be taken seriously, and whether the push for safer, fairer care has real force behind it.

The review will look at cases from 2018 onwards and is expected to examine more than 1,000 cases across a period of more than a decade. It will include stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths, severe brain injuries suffered by babies around birth, and cases of severe maternal harm. One of the most important details is that eligible families will be included automatically unless they choose to opt out. That removes a big burden from people who may already be dealing with grief, trauma or missing paperwork. Ockenden will also be able to look at cases before 2018, and at cases where women believe they meet the severe harm criteria even if records are incomplete or missing.

That wide scope did not appear by accident. In the government's announcement, ministers said it was jointly agreed after a series of meetings between affected families and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. A core group of families and MPs met him in March and April, pushing for a review that matched the scale of the concern rather than a narrow investigation. The campaign group Truth For Our Babies said families across Sussex had spent years organising, researching and speaking out while also carrying grief and trauma. Their point is simple and powerful: accountability only means something if the review can show what went wrong, why it happened, and what must change so future parents and babies are safer. The group is also encouraging affected families, or people who think they may have been affected, to connect through its Facebook community.

Streeting said the families who campaigned for the review had shown extraordinary courage and deserved the full truth about what happened to them and their babies. He also stressed that the scope had been made deliberately broad and inclusive. That matters because official reviews can sometimes exclude people through technical rules; here, the stated aim is the opposite. Ockenden has said family voices will run through the whole process, alongside evidence from current and former staff working on the ground in Sussex. She has also said the review should hear from disadvantaged, seldom heard and global majority families, not only from people who already know how to move through formal systems. For a review like this to carry trust, it has to hear from those who are usually easiest to overlook.

There is still another step to come. The full terms of reference, which is the detailed document setting out exactly how the review will work, will be developed with Ockenden and families in the coming months. So, while the broad outline is now public, the finer points of process, evidence and reporting are still being shaped. Ockenden has also said her team will share learning as the work goes on, rather than waiting until the very end. If that happens well, problems identified during the review could start informing changes before a final report is published. For families, that will not erase what has happened, but it does matter if action starts sooner rather than later.

The Sussex review follows repeated concerns from harmed and bereaved families about the safety of care at the trust. On the same day as this announcement, the Care Quality Commission upgraded UHSx's rating for leadership from inadequate to requires improvement. We should read that carefully: it suggests some movement, but it is not the same as an all-clear, and it does not remove the need for independent scrutiny. The government also repeated an important reassurance: the vast majority of NHS births have good outcomes, and women should continue to attend all maternity appointments and raise concerns with their midwife or healthcare team. That line is there for a reason. Public confidence matters, but so does honesty about where services have failed and why families in Sussex kept demanding an outside review.

Ministers are placing the Sussex review inside a wider national push on maternity safety. Since July 2024, the government says England has recruited 2,000 extra midwives and invested more than £149 million in 122 building and safety projects across 49 NHS trusts. It also points to a programme focused on the two leading causes of avoidable brain injury during labour, Martha's Rule pilots in maternity and neonatal units in 14 trusts across six regions, work to reduce stillbirths, neonatal brain injury, neonatal death and preterm birth, and a culture and leadership programme for maternity and neonatal leaders. Ministers have also highlighted midwife retention schemes and the Graduate Guarantee for newly qualified nurses and midwives. Alongside that, ministers say they have expanded maternal mental health services, extended baby loss certificates to cover all historic losses, issued guidance on major causes of maternal death such as thrombosis, mental ill health, epilepsy and haemorrhage, and started work on discrimination, earlier warning systems and inequalities data. Streeting has also ordered a national maternity investigation chaired by Baroness Amos, appointed Ockenden to chair an independent review of maternity, and promised to chair a National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce. The big question now is the one families in Sussex have been asking all along: will these reviews produce answers, accountability and safer care, or just more official language?