K&c MATERNITY WARD SHUT IN 2012

The east Kent hospitals trust shut the birthing unit at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital in 2012. It closed the units at Canterbury and Dover’s Buckland Hospital in order strengthen services at its hospitals in Ashford and Margate.

The trust argued that rising birth rates and a changing pattern of patient choice made a review of maternity services necessary.

It claims these factors have made it difficult to provide safe, high-quality care

have been able to do that easily with a maternity unit in Canterbury instead of nearly an hour of travel to Ashford,” Mrs Hamilton said.

“I just think with a city like this and with all the development going on, Canterbury needs a maternity unit.”

Mrs Hamilton had been sent away from the William Harvey without the closure of the stand-alone birthing centres so the most experienced staff can be transferred to the high-risk labour wards in Ashford and Margate.

It also wanted to improve the level of one-to-one care and the ratio of midwives to births across the service.

Campaign group Concern for Health in East Kent accused the trust of displaying an “extraordinary level of arrogance and indifference” when it shut the service.

on the morning of Madeleine’s birth on August 12, only to return seven hours later after going into full-blown labour.

As the baby began to emerge, she called ahead to the maternity ward and was met by two midwives in the car park.

“They delivered Maddy inside the car before I was taken inside,” she said. “In