Written question WQ96701

We are committed to ensuring families who suffer the loss of a baby have the best possible care and support.

The Welsh Government’s vision is for a compassionate Wales where everyone has equitable access to high-quality bereavement care and support to meet their needs when they need it. We are building on the excellent examples of bereavement care across Wales and addressing the gaps and challenges in service provision.

Our bereavement framework describes how we can respond to those challenges and seeks to guide our commissioners and providers of bereavement services to ensure that there is clarity on the type and standard of support that we would like to see for bereaved people in Wales.

Our sudden and unexpected death in children and young people up to 25 support pathway was published in 2022. It sets out the support that anyone affected by the sudden and unexpected death of a child or young person up to the age of 25 years can expect. This includes immediate support, planned and short-term care, longer term care and prevention and well-being support.

Draft standards for bereavement care which will underpin the national bereavement care pathway for pregnancy and baby loss in Wales project have been developed and are due to be published shortly. These incorporate feedback from parents and healthcare professionals. The National Strategic Clinical Network for Maternity and Neonatal Services is expected to take forward this work.

Implementation of the pathways is monitored through the NHS Performance Framework, where all health boards are required to provide a detailed update to the Welsh Government at six monthly intervals about progress. This is monitored through regular meetings with both providers and health boards including at the health board bereavement leads meetings.

In February, we published the Quality Statement for Maternity and Neonatal services, which sets out what good looks like and what outcomes and standards pregnant women, mothers-to-be and their families can expect to receive when accessing care.

The voices of families are central to improving services, we have also published the Perinatal engagement framework which sets out clear expectations on engagement with service users, enabling feedback and learning, hearing all voices regardless of background. This will improve the quality of services ensuring coproduction in developing services and optimising both experiences and outcomes.