Half of black women in UK who raise concerns during labour did not receive suitable help

[IwantToRetire]

Maternity experiences of more than 1,000 pregnant people found black women up to four times more likely to die in childbirth

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/21/half-of-black-women-in-uk-who-raise-concerns-during-labour-did-not-receive-suitable-help-study-finds

I know there have been other threads about this on FWR, but cant seem to find them. Only to say that the situation still seems to be as bad as it was a year ago(?)

I think there is no doubt from the many horror stories from women who have been let down by NHS maternity services that under funding is a contributing factor https://rcm.org.uk/media-releases/2025/04/shocking-budget-cuts-will-compromise-the-delivery-of-safe-maternity-care-in-every-way-says-rcm/

But like so many things in the UK we "discover" an issue. It gets talked about, it gets researched, everyone agrees things must change, and then a couple of years later it turns out nothing has changed, and the whole pattern repeats.

But even if, a bit crued, there was an agreed check list. Not that everything on the list will be relevant to every woman, but at somehow covering the basics.

But also realise, that in using the word Black and even assuming the reference to Black British women, within that group there are cultural differences.

The figures for the increase in black women's maternal deaths should be shocking but it's in line with previous research so sadly I'm not surprised.

Lack of pain relief for a 1/4 of Black women should also be shocking, though I would point out that it's better than average according to the CQC who found that in general 1/3rd of women are denied pain relief in maternity services. There may be some differences in how the surveys were run, and possibly the much lower number of Black women surveyed makes the numbers a bit less reliable.

Maternity services are in freefall and underfunding is a significant part of that, though I think cover up culture and endemic bullying also plays a role (both of which are probably partly down to a lack of resources). But even taking that into account, I don't think we can ignore the way the NHS fails to serve Black women as well as it serves others.

when we know that black women are most likely to be subject to racism of any group it therefore should be no surprise that this translates into maternity.
The devastating consequences are shown in the statistics and desperately need to be tackled urgently

This. When excuses for the different outcomes for Black Women have been exhausted, then what?

I've definitely commented on this on MN before if not started a thread.

It's been going on for years with absolutely no progression. It's utterly appalling and scandalous.

But women's health doesn't matter and we don't get angry enough about it, when we really should.

I havent found that the NHS routinely and timely provides interpreters. We have lots of young people we work with who dont speak English and they often cant be seen as the NHS wont provide an interpreter, appointments get cancelled, rescheduled etc

I can easily believe this.
I remember when I was working in my last year of training, a young (early 20s) single black British woman was admitted to the antenatal ward for care, complaining of feeling just not right. Staff, doctors and midwives, openly refused to believe her. They thought, for whatever reason, she was making it all up so the council would house her locally (hospital was some way away from her home address and in a naice area).
This was said openly in the handover, instantly prejudicing staff against her.
As the lowly student I was assigned to care for her, and being from where she lived, actually took time to speak to her.
Turns out she was staying at her cousins in the naice area, to help with childcare when she started feeling poorly. She didn't want to be in hospital but wanted to look after her pregnancy, which is totally fair.
I took her obs which were fine and noticed swelling in one of her legs. I suspected DVT and raised it with the junior Dr's and senior midwives. They were so dismissive and for the rest of the shift kept sarcastically asking about my 'dvt lady'.
I had a few weeks on study block and when I came back ended up caring for her during labour. Turns out the DVT was confirmed. And her baby was small for dates due to placental failure.
I was fuming on her behalf. Unfortunately the staff attitudes towards her never changed, for the weeks she was admitted, they all believed she was there to try and 'play the system'.
Guess what. All of the Dr's and Senior Midwives making these prejudicial remarks were not white British. They themselves were from India, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Iran etc.
It really showed me that racism is so entrenched and also not as simple as white people being ignorant towards black people. It's far more complex than that, but that's what happens when you create a system where you import your staff. You also import their cultural attitudes too, and sometimes that is racism.

1 in 5 NHS staff are already non-British nationals.
An unknown quantity are British but born abroad and we're trained abroad.
When I was in the NHS I was the odd one out being British trained and also a British national.

This is interesting - I was going to say that if I were a WoC and saw all those stats and were about to give birth, I would feel safer and more heard with a team that were also BAME. But that’s probably psychological as pp points out language barrier.

Yes this is so horrifying, as Black women the health inequalities are horrible. It's the system, many medical students (research shows) and doctors believe Black women feel less pain and have higher pain thresholds. Also many medical devices have never (until recently and some not yet) been tested on Black skin e.g that tool for determining need for C-section, due to (not 100% sure, read the study a while back) kidneys etc and blood - it was found that the baseline for BAME women was higher. So essentially Black women were getting c-sections when they didn't need them, or other options should have happened first (so major abdominal surgery, hard recovery). The stereotypes of 'strong Black women' still persist and we don't believe Black women when they say they're in pain. More education is needed on BAME's women health and mental health. I once did some research on how Black women with the exact same presentations to white women and sometimes with more severe ones - would get less therapy, get antipsychotics instead of antidepressants as well - because more aggressive and 'masculine' stereotypes.

I hope any pregnant black women reading this news report (and thread) have some real life support as its quite a hard hitting thing to read. All pregnant mothers feel very vulnerable i think. I dont know what can be done short term but I do hope the conversation keeps happening until iis not needed any more.

I'm white and I was treated both times as though I should scuttle away in to a corner and keep quiet like a sheep. Only one person was supportive and that was a consultant anaesthetist who did my first epidural. Coupled with the extra attitudes black women seem to have levelled at them I'm.sadly not surprised.

There will also be cultural barriers. There is also FGM - which causes enormous problems in childbirth.
Not giving pain relief is out of order. Though I notice the drive for 'natural childbirth' also affects white women e.g. scandals in Salisbury where the culture was to have a vaginal birth at all costs because natural was best and also it kept down the number of caesarians.
Natural childbirth is all very well but having a living and healthy mother and child at the end is also a good idea.