Making Maternity Care Safer and Saving Babies' Lives

Sands focuses on improving maternity care and saving babies’ lives. We've supported a series of research projects that build on each other’s findings to drive meaningful progress in improving care and outcomes across maternity systems.

This started with the Listening to Parents study in 2014. Sands helped researchers Maggie Redshaw and Rachel Rowe carry out the first national survey of parents who had experienced stillbirth or neonatal death. This important study showed that we need personalised maternity care and that healthcare professionals need to listen to parents' concerns, and that doing so can prevent avoidable deaths. 

Using what we learned from the Listening to Parents study, Sands worked with Rachel Rowe on the ESMiE Confidential Enquiry (2016-2020), run by the MBRRACE collaboration. This project looked into baby deaths in midwife-led settings and found that better care could have prevented 75% of these deaths. One of the key points raised was that staff in these settings were not always properly trained in fetal heart monitoring, a key technique in checking how the baby is doing before and during labour. This alarming discovery made it clear that we needed to look deeper into maternity care practices and training around fetal monitoring and management of labour, leading to the Listen2Baby study. 

Since 2022, Sands have been supporting Rachel Rowe in the Listen2Baby study, which focusses on making sure that a baby’s heart rate monitoring is done correctly during low-risk pregnancies. The project aims to find out how heart rate monitoring is done in the UK, reviewing the training given to midwives, and identifying ways to improve heart rate monitoring during straightforward pregnancies. Building on findings from earlier research, the Listen2Baby study targets a key aspect of maternity care that has the potential to reduce avoidable baby deaths.

Sands' supported research has shown that safer care could have prevented 8 out of 10 baby deaths. This progress over time shows how research Sands has supported is making a difference in maternity care. We will keep working with researchers, healthcare professionals, and parents who have experienced loss to create positive change and make a lasting difference for babies and their families.