I’m incredibly proud to say that.
That was our aim as a Core Group back in March and, along with the members of the Core Group, I’m absolutely delighted that through hard work, commitment and no little skill, collectively we have been able to reach this point.
Truly it has been a monumental effort - by hundreds – to get to the stage where guidance documents have been created for the eleven pilot sites to trial, encompassing five separate pathways: miscarriage, ToPFA (Termination of Pregnancy for Fetal Anomaly), stillbirth, neonatal death and SUDI (Sudden and Unexpected Death in Infancy).
The gratitude of the Core Group extends to everyone involved in writing, reviewing and editing these documents. A team of around 40 were deployed in one way or another to reach the stage that we could upload these to our new website. This included parents, healthcare professionals, academics, voluntary sector staff, and others. Thank you and thank you again.
At this stage the documents are only available to the pilot sites so that they can be trialled and tested ahead of wave 2 in April 2018 and a national roll out this time next year.
I’m pleased to say that the new National Bereavement Care Pathway webpage is also live, and you can now access it at www.nbcpathway.org.uk. Again, a big thank you to those who have helped us get to this stage. You’ll see that there is a section just for the pilot sites to access at this stage but clearly in time it will be open to all. The website is in the early stages of development and we want to develop a parent area of the site with resources, signposts and links. We also want to make the webpage more navigable so that healthcare professionals are able to move between sections of the pathway rather than downloading a full PDF. These are areas we are looking to develop over the coming months.
The launch of the National Bereavement Care Pathway was a great occasion, where many stakeholders came together to celebrate how far we had come, whilst recognising there is still a long way to go. The Core Group were joined by parents and other stakeholders, as well as representatives of the pilot sites. One of our Parent Advisory Group, Michelle, shared her own experiences with the audience which brought home to us the importance of consistent and high-quality bereavement care across the country.
We are hugely indebted to the involvement and commitment of Antoinette Sandbach MP and Will Quince MP, along with their parliamentary colleagues on the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Baby Loss, for their drive and commitment over the past few months to ensure that the NBCP could get off the ground, and for their attendance and speeches at the launch event.
The event gave Baby Loss Awareness Week a flying start and this continued through the week with various events. As you’ll be aware, the Prime Minister responded to a Parliamentary Question at last Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions regarding the NBCP and commended all stakeholders for contributing to its development.
What else can I add to that? Suffice to say that we are already looking forward to the next phase of the NBCP’s development and planning towards Wave 2. In the next blog I will provide an update and announcement on the training and evaluation streams, so watch this space.
In the meantime, huge thanks once again to you all for your continued support.
Marc