Note of defiance sounded at Melton baby unit closure forum

Passions ran high last night (Monday) at an online forum called to debate the issues surrounding proposals to close St Mary’s Birth Centre as part of a move to consolidate all major Leicestershire maternity services in the city.

Mums who have been involved in Facebook campaigns to retain the town unit for more than 15 years were joined at the Zoom meeting by Melton MP, Alicia Kearns, borough and county councillor, Alan Pearson, senior midwifery professional, Louise Walker, and university academic, Dr Sally Ruane, who co-authored a recently-published study which argued the birth centre should be kept open.

Members of the public also took part in the forum, which was organised by local community action group, Melton Matters, but the local clinical commissioning groups, which want to close the baby unit as part of a £450million reorganisation of Leicestershire and Rutland hospital services, declined an invitation to attend.

Participants were critical of the way the health authority has framed the debate about the birth centre in a series of online public consultation events over the last few weeks, where they were said to have implied it was a lower risk for women to have babies in hospital settings with greater resources.

And concern was voiced that plans to relocate the Melton baby unit to a standalone midwifery birth centre at the Leicester General Hospital was only due to take place as a 12-month trial with no guarantee it would be a permanent facility.

Mum-of-four, Helen Cliff, from the Facebook group ‘Save St Mary’s Birth Centre’, chaired the forum and told attendees that two petitions had been delivered to the health authority’s scrutiny meeting earlier in the day with more than 5,000 signatures on them.

She said: “The people who signed these petitions are not just from Melton Mowbray.

“They include people from Belton, Oakham, Uppingham, Leicester, Syston, Loughborough, Lutterworth, Mountsorrel.

“These are women who live all round the two counties who love St Mary’s and who do not want to see it close.”

Mrs Cliff, who also highlighted the importance of the excellent post-natal services the Melton unit provides, added: “Our campaign will not be over when the consultation ends on December 21.

“The standalone unit at the General still hangs in the balance because it would only be a trial so the CCGs must know that we will be watching them whatever is decided with St Mary’s.

“We will not allow them to get away with closing maternity services.”

One of the major reasons health bosses want to close the birth centre is that it is under-used - there were 141 babies born there in the year 2018-19 when it requires 500 to be a viable service.

The CCGs maintain a unit based in Leicester would be accessible for more women across the city and county and they would also be nearer greater medical resources if there were problens with the pregancy or birth.

But Dr Ruane, director of the health policy unit at De Montfort University, argued at the forum that these points were not valid reasons to close it.

She also pointed out that many extra women had been diverted to St Mary’s this year because of the strain on hospital resources in the city.

“I made a freedom of information request which showed that there was a 20 per cent increase in births at the Melton unit between March and August this year, compared to the same period last year,” Dr Ruane told the meeting.

“This shows how important it is to have some flexibility in your hospital estate.

“It does worry me that they would be putting all the births into one building, which is in an area which is often gridlocked with traffic with a limited number of parking spaces.”

Councillor Pearson said research had shown that centralising services was never an effective thing to do.

“I find it hard to comprehend why they are pursuing this central base for maternity services, with all the congestion there is in the city,” he told the meeting.

“There are 750,000 people living in Leicestershire and it will be just as dificult for them to travel to a city hospital to give birth than to somewhere like Melton.”

Louise Walker, associate professor of midwifery at the University of Nottingham, spent 14 years as a midwife at St Mary’s Birth Centre and she told the forum that it had always been under-resourced and not promoted enough to increase the number of births there.

She said: “From my experience, women have only known about the unit from word of mouth, from other women, rather than from community midwives.

“It needs to be promoted a lot more than it is because you can drive there easily enough, park your car and not pay as much as you would to park in Leicester.”

Some participants at the forum said their questions to senior health officials at the online consultation events were not always answered properly and they felt they did not get the answers they wanted on issues surrounding the proposals.

MP Mrs Kearns said she had asked for assurances from the CCGs that community maternity services would be effective for Melton mums if a decision was taken to close St Mary’s and she said she would personally take forward any queries local people had on the issues directly to the health authority.

She told attendees: “If you feel you are not being listened to then email me and I will put the questions to them but please do it soon before the deadline is reached.

“The CCGs will be focused on risks and outcomes with all this and as an MP I understand that stance.

“It will be difficult to save the unit but that doesn’t mean you can’t continue to try.”

The overall proposals would also include a new maternity hospital and the first single-site dedicated children’s hospital in the East Midlands at Leicester Royal Infirmary, plus the expanding of Glenfield Hospital by a third to create a planned care treatment centre for operations and emergency procedures.

A new community health campus with non-acute services would be created on the site of Leicester General Hospital, including in-patient beds for patients recovering from a stroke, new GP direct access imaging facilities such as x-rays and scans to help diagnose conditions quicker, plus the retention of the existing diabetes centre of excellence.

To see the full consultation document and complete the questionnaire survey go online at www.betterhospitalsleicester.nhs.uk or email [email protected] for further details or alternatively call 0116 295 0750 to have a hard copy sent out to you before the December 21 deadline.