Safer care in maternity and neonatal services

We work with maternity and neonatal units across the East Midlands to improve safety for mothers and birthing people during pregnancy, and ensure preterm babies get the best start in life, by delivering evidence-based care at the right time.

Ongoing projects we led during the year included:

Perinatal Optimisation and Stabilisation of the Preterm Infant – working with maternity and neonatal units across the region to help them deliver a care bundle of interventions that demonstrate a significant impact on brain injury and mortality of Preterm Babies.
Perinatal Deterioration - improving the prevention, identification, escalation, and response (PIER) to maternal and neonatal deterioration through designing and testing the maternity and neonatal early warning score tools.
Perinatal leadership and culture programme (PCLP) - enabling leaders to drive change with a better understanding of the relationship between compassionate and inclusive leadership, safety improvement and safety culture.
Avoiding Brain Injuries in Childbirth (ABC) - reducing preventable harm by improving the safety and quality of maternity care.

Together they aim to embed a pathway of care that leads to improved health outcomes; and prevents, identifies and manages deterioration.

Listen to our podcast on the Avoiding Brain Injuries in Childbirth programme.

Return to the Impact Report

“We have built a fantastic collaborative
relationship with HIEM, which has had
a positive impact on the progress of the
Regional Early Breast Milk Project.”

Partnership with East Midlands Neonatal
Operational Delivery Network

Impacts 2025-2026

From April 2020 to March 2026, up to 129 lives have been saved in the East Midlands with our support, by ensuring timely interventions are in place where problems could arise:

1,193 women giving birth at less than 30 weeks received magnesium sulphate within 24 hours before birth. This meant up to 32 babies will not develop cerebral palsy, transforming the lives of the children and avoiding lifetime care costs of up to £32M.

633 women in preterm labour at less than 34 weeks received antibiotics to reduce the risk of the baby developing early onset neonatal Group B Streptococcal infection, which can lead to severe and dangerous infections including sepsis and meningitis. This potentially means up to 63 babies in the East Midlands were born without Group B strep.

Up to 21 babies’ lives were saved thanks to mothers receiving antenatal corticosteroids – medication for women between 24 and 34 weeks of gestation where there is a risk of preterm birth – which helps lung development in the foetus, reducing the risk of breathing problems and other complications in newborns.

Up to 93 babies born at less than 34 weeks gestational age survived because their umbilical cord was clamped at, or after one minute after birth.

18 staff trained in Culture Coach skills in 2025-2026 which supports clinical teams to build a culture of safety and improvement, bolstered by the development of a Culture Toolkit to support trusts with embedding learning.