Led by NHS England, the national Maternal and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme’s (MatNeoSIP) mission is to create and embed the conditions for all staff to improve the safety and outcomes of maternal and neonatal care by reducing unwarranted variation and providing a high quality healthcare experience for all women, babies and families across England.

MatNeo newsletters

We regularly send MatNeo newsletters about our work, events and resources. Sign up here to receive these.

About the Maternity and Neonatal Patient Safety Network

Our Patient Safety Network offers a unique opportunity for those working to improve maternal and neonatal care across the local maternity systems to interact and collaborate, and a forum for local improvement to thrive. Please visit our events page to find details of future meetings and webinars.

Find out more about our Maternity and Neonatal Patient Safety Network in our charter and driver diagram.

The network includes members from all providers of maternity and neonatal services, multi-professionals, women, families, and other key stakeholders and covers the West of England region.

Working together

Locally, we are working in partnership with our regional Trusts, Local Maternity and Neonatal Systems (LMS), and other partners including (but not limited to):

Key ambitions

The national MatNeoSIP aims to:

  • Improve the optimisation and stabilisation of the preterm infant.
  • To improve the prevention, identification, escalation, and response (PIER) to maternal and neonatal deterioration.
  • Utilise safety culture insights for improved quality of care and inform local improvement plans.

To meet these ambitions we will continue to build on learning and successes from our PReCePT (Prevention of Cerebral Palsy in PreTerm Labour) and PERIPrem (Perinatal Excellence to Reduce Injury in Preterm Birth) projects.

Regional achievements

As measured by the National Neonatal Audit Programme’s (NNAP) latest report (published in November 2022), units across the South West achieved, on average, the:

  • highest rate of delayed cord clamping in England and Wales for the second year in a row
  • parental presence at one or more consultant rounds (for admissions lasting more than 24 hours) were also at their highest across England and Wales in the South West.
  • On average, units across the South West also achieved the second highest rates of maternal early breast milk, the second lowest rates of necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) and the third lowest rates of mortality to discharge for babies born at less than 28 weeks across England.

PERIPrem has achieved life changing, sustainable improvements to the way the most vulnerable babies are cared for and accelerated perinatal working culture and innovation. Read our PERIPrem case study.

Regional Perinatal Equity Network

In response to the growing commitment to address inequality within maternity and neonatal services, the Regional Perinatal Equity Network was launched in July 2021 by West of England and South West AHSNs. The Network is open to all working within maternity and neonatal services, related organisations as well as those with a responsibility or interest in reducing inequalities in the NHS. We also warmly welcome parents or patient partners.

Find out more about the Regional Perinatal Equity Network.

Improving maternity outcomes for Black mothers

Inspired by Black Mothers Matter’s vision that one day Black mothers will no longer be disproportionately in danger during pregnancy and the first year after birth, our Black Maternity Matters project has been developed in partnership with Representation Matters and BCohCo.

Read more about Black Maternity Matters.

Get in touch

For more information on our Maternity and Neonatal work and events, please contact our Patient Safety Team.

Sign up to receive our Maternity & Neonatal newsletter
PERIPrem

PERIPrem

Find out more about PERIPrem (Perinatal Excellence to Reduce Injury in Premature Birth), and download resources, to improve the outcomes for premature babies.

Read more
Preterm baby

PReCePT

The PReCePT programme is reducing the incidence of cerebral palsy by offering magnesium sulphate to all eligible women in England during preterm labour (less than 30 weeks).

Read more
Child with a doctor

Improving patient safety

Our award-winning support for improving patient safety is central to our work in transforming health services and systems.

Read more