Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme

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.

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):

• South West Maternity and Children’s Network
• South West Neonatal Operational Delivery Network
• South West AHSN
• Better Births Gloucestershire
• South West Regional Maternity Safety Champions
• Black Mothers Matter
• Representation Matters
• BCohCo 
• South West Public Health England
• South West Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Clinical Network
• Wessex AHSN
• Charities such as Tommy’s, Bliss, The Twins Trust, SANDS

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.

• PERIPrem is a unique perinatal care bundle which includes 11 interventions incorporating:
  • birth in the right place;
  • antenatal administration of magnesium sulphate;
  • antenatal corticosteroids;
  • intravenous antibiotics;
  • delayed cord clamping;
  • thermoregulation and
  • early breast milk.

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.