4. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Cwm Taf Maternity Services

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:45 pm on 30 April 2019.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 4:45, 30 April 2019

Thank you for the comments and the questions. Again, I welcome the point you make about staff. There will be many staff who will be concerned going into work today and looking to go into work for the rest of this week. There's a point about how we support staff, about how we still have high expectations of how staff behave, and how they are to be supported to work in a much more open environment.

I completely recognise your point about families wanting to see improvement. Many people said expressly they came forward to tell their story because they didn't want it to happen to someone else and they wanted the service to be improved. That does go back into record keeping—one of the concerns that I recognised having read the report as well. I do think the better use of what is no longer new technology but standard technology in large parts of our life is part of doing that, to provide a greater robustness and certainty about record transfer and actually taking a more proactive approach to capture the views of people as they're using the service as well. So, I absolutely do think that is a standard part of the future.

Crucially, it goes into your second point about support from other health boards who serve similar communities. Because actually there is already good practice that exists within the system here in Wales on the doorstep of the former Cwm Taf area, and it's important to me that that is properly accessed and taken on board in improving the service within the former Cwm Taf area to make sure that we don't wait months and months and months to make no progress, but that the immediate improvements that could be made, we're clear about what those are and the support that's provided for people who are running midwifery at the services, who are running maternity services in very similar communities with different intervention rates and different outcome rates.