Our baby loss and pre-term birth staff support an inspiration to others
A year ago Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (BWC) was proud to launch a support package for its staff who suffer pregnancy loss or the complexities of having a baby born prematurely – a first in our National Health Service. Now thousands more people are benefitting after other organisations have followed its lead.
As a Trust that supports families each and every single day, BWC is determined to break the taboos that exist. In the UK one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage but there still remains a silence in many parts of our society about this heartbreaking and sadly common issue.
There are also 37,000 babies born early each year and the difficulties their families go through can also be hidden and misunderstood.
In July 2021 the Trust officially launched its new policy, with the support of Trade Union partners, as well as out Maternity and miscarriage research teams. It also signed up to The Smallest Things Charter at the same time.
It offers all 6,500 members of the BWC family a unique package of support for those who experience baby loss, including:
- Up to 10 days paid leave for the person who was pregnant and up to five days paid leave for the partner. This includes, but is not limited to, miscarriage, stillbirth, abortion, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy and neonatal loss. This is not dependent upon gestation of pregnancy or length of service.
- In addition, staff are offered paid time off for appointments linked to pregnancy loss, for example, medical examinations, scans and tests and mental health-related interventions, if this stretches beyond the time outlined above.
- A promise that all requests to work flexibly following a bereavement will also be treated with understanding and sensitivity.
For colleagues who have a baby born early the policy includes:
- Extended leave at full pay until the estimated date of when Maternity Leave was due to commence and two weeks paid leave for partners of premature babies, allowing paternity leave to be taken later.
- Support when returning to work following the birth of a premature baby with consideration given to flexible working arrangements.
Over the last 12 months many people have accessed this additional support at a time when they needed it most – making a real difference.
As a champion for these issues the Trust has also been thrilled to support many other organisations across the NHS, public and private sectors, which, after taking inspiration from us since summer. Directly this has meant potentially more than 100,000 people now have access to such support and many more have shown an interest or have started their journeys to adopting something similar.
Raffaela Goodby, Chief People officer at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, which also signed up to the Miscarriage Association’s Awareness Pledge last winter, said: “Becoming an employer with heart in this way was born out of our Trust ambition to be brave and support our people at a terrible time with love and compassion.
“We hope that tackling the stigma of talking about pregnancy and parenting will help our colleagues and the communities we serve.”