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The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health is pleased to be working with the Welsh Government and the Health Board to provide an independent view on neonatal services in North Wales.

RCPCH is the leading professional organisation supporting research training and policy developments for paediatrics including neonatal care.  We work closely with specialty groups such as the British Association of Perinatal Medicine (BAPM) and have an established process for providing confidential independent reviews of services and systems.

The publication in February of the Francis Inquiry into the failings at the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust presents an enormous challenge to all healthcare professionals that cannot and should not be ignored.

The report outlined in painful detail the extent to which systemic failures, breakdown of communication and poor management in Mid-Staffordshire cost lives and was right to say that all healthcare organisations have a responsibility to act promptly to ensure such a crisis never happens again.

Two weeks ago, Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Essex was named as one of five NHS trusts in England with “persistently high” death rates.

The future of some of Scotland’s centres for paediatric services are at risk with staff shortages and a lack of cash likely to lead to closures this year.

A closure of the children’s ward at St John’s Hospital in Livingston is “highly likely” this summer, a year after the service was controversially shut for three weeks due to a short-term staffing crisis, a new report from health executives has warned.