‘They condemned my daughter to death’: The family whose fight for justice uncovered the Shrewsbury maternity scandal

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The pair were forced to fight for an inquest to uncover what caused their baby Kate’s death then, along with other grieving families, pushed for a major investigation into the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust’s maternity units. In one of the most graphic examples, a mother told investigators the trust failed to tell her for three weeks that her child’s body was ready for collection after a post-mortem, by which time it had undergone “extensive post death changes and deterioration” meaning she was unable to see the baby before burial “because of the poor condition of the body”. I’ll park in the housing estate across the road but I just can’t go there.” Many parents were angry at the trust’s use of the terms “historic” and “legacy” to describe older cases, with one mother telling the inquiry team: “We are not historic, we are not legacy, we are real families whose lives have been turned upside down, and forever. The woman said: “I phoned my GP and when I said I’d had a cardiac arrest she actually swore because she was so shocked, she knew absolutely nothing about it.” Another mother whose baby died told the inquiry: “What I want out of this, what would be worthwhile, is to know that whatever comes from it are positive changes to prevent things like this from happening again, that’s ultimately all I think any of us really want from it.” Rhiannon Davies said the report showed Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals Trust had “catastrophically failed to learn from incidents and past reports and that failure condemned my daughter to death”.