Call for senior managers to be held accountable over scandal

A FURIOUS council leader has taken the unprecedented step of issuing a public threepage letter to the bosses in charge of hospitals where mums were failed in maternity wards.

Rhondda Cynon Taf Council leader Andrew Morgan turned up at the meeting of the Cwm Taf health board last Thursday, despite being told he could not speak, and called for senior managers to be held responsible for the scandal.

The meeting was being held to discuss a report into why a consultant midwife’s damning first investigation into the problems at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, near Llantristant, and Prince Charles Hospital, in Merthyr Tydfil, were not more widely circulated and acted on.

The level of stillbirths exposed by the midwife in September 2018, which painted a picture of a failing, understaffed service lacking basic procedures, was not made public until May the following year.

Mr Morgan said it was scandalous if mums and babies were put at risk because of a report had been “suppressed”.

At the meeting at Ynysmeurig House in Abercynon, board members were able to put questions and concerns to Independent Governance Advisor Steve Combe, who carried out a report into how the initial report had been handled.

The report highlighted systematic failures in clinical care, inadequate reporting of incidents and missed opportunities for improvement. It also raised staff concerns about a “punitive culture of blame” within the units.

However, it was not shared with board members or their committees.

At the meeting Mr Combe claimed that, according to his findings, the report wasn’t purposely ignored but said “there was a lot going on at the same time”.

Coun Morgan said the senior executive team must be held to account for what’s happened.

As the meeting concluded, it was decided that more work would be done before the next meeting, scheduled for the end of January, to answer further questions about how the report appeared to go missed.