If something went wrong during your pregnancy, labour or your baby's first days — and you were told it was "just one of those things" — you are not being paranoid, difficult or ungrateful for asking questions. This guide shows you exactly what evidence to request, from whom, and how to protect your right to answers, accountability and compensation.
Top Tips — Read These First
If you only have the energy for a few things right now, make it these.
1. Write down everything you remember, now, with dates and names. Your own contemporaneous account is evidence — and memories fade faster than you think.
2. Request your full records early. Records can be "lost", and claims have a 3-year time limit (though no limit applies for children or those lacking mental capacity).
3. Ask specifically for the CTG traces. The fetal heart monitoring printout is the single most important document in most birth injury cases — and the one most often missing.
4. Never accept a verbal explanation. Ask for every finding, apology or explanation in writing, with the evidence behind it.
5. Get the incident grading in writing. Ask: "Was this reported as a patient safety incident? At what grade? Was it referred for external investigation?" Nottingham showed downgrading is how cover-ups happen.
6. You don't have to accept the internal review. The Hawkins were told there were no errors. There were. Independent routes exist — use them.
In June 2026, Donna Ockenden published the largest maternity review in NHS history. Her team examined 2,500 family cases at Nottingham University Hospitals and found 155 babies who died and 105 who were seriously injured where different care may have altered the outcome. But the most chilling finding wasn't the numbers. It was what families were *told*. Jack and Sarah Hawkins — both senior medical staff at the trust — were told their daughter Harriet's death was due to an infection, and an internal review concluded there were "no errors" in her care. They refused to accept it. Years later, they were awarded £2.8 million, and Ockenden concluded Harriet's avoidable death "was compounded by a systemic cover-up and investigations designed to mislead." The report found incidents were routinely downgraded to avoid external scrutiny, and poor outcomes "were regularly dismissed as known complications."
The lesson is stark: the hospital's own account of what happened is a starting point — not the truth. This article shows you how to get to the truth. You don't need to do everything at once, and you don't need to have it all figured out today. Each step below is small, free or low-cost, and something you can do from home, in your own time.
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Why "Everything Was Fine" Might Not Be True
Every major maternity inquiry of the last five years — Shrewsbury and Telford (2022), East Kent (2022), Nottingham (2026) — found the same pattern. It isn't usually a single doctor lying to your face. It's a system quietly protecting itself:
- Incident downgrading. Ockenden found a "persistent structural misapplication of incident grading" at Nottingham — deaths and injuries weren't investigated if someone decided they were unavoidable. Between 2012 and 2024, more than 100 cases involving significant or major concerns had no incident reports at all.
- Governance shaped by self-protection. Ockenden described leaders who created "an environment in which bullying was normalised, speaking up was dangerous and governance was shaped by self-protection, rather than patient safety."
- Blaming the mother. The East Kent inquiry found that in some cases, "mothers were blamed for the death of their child." Its chair, Dr Bill Kirkup, said the overriding theme was "the failure of the trust's staff to take notice of women when they raised concerns."
- Internal reviews that clear the trust. An internal review told the Hawkins family there were no errors in Harriet's care. Multiple independent reviews later proved otherwise.
None of this means every hospital is hiding something. Most births are safe and most staff are dedicated. But if your instinct says something went wrong and the explanations don't add up, the inquiries prove your instinct deserves to be tested against the evidence — not dismissed. Every one of those inquiries began with parents who were told they were wrong — and weren't.
The Evidence Checklist — What to Request, From Whom, and Why
The law gives you powerful rights to your own records — and using them requires no confrontation, no meetings and no explanations. You are simply asking for what is already yours. Here is exactly what to ask for. Start with the first row; the rest can wait until you're ready.
| Evidence | How to get it | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Full maternity records (yours and baby's) | Subject Access Request (SAR) to the trust — free, legal deadline of 1 calendar month under UK GDPR | The foundation of everything. Ask explicitly for *both* handwritten and electronic notes |
| CTG traces (fetal heart monitoring) | Name them specifically in your SAR; ask for original or full-resolution copies | Misreading CTGs was a core failure at Nottingham, Shrewsbury and East Kent. Often the decisive evidence |
| Partogram, drug charts, theatre and anaesthetic notes | Include in your SAR | Shows timings — when problems appeared and how long staff took to act |
| Incident reports (e.g. Datix) and any Serious Incident or PSIRF investigation | Ask the trust in writing: was an incident reported, at what grade, and was it escalated externally? Request the report | Reveals whether the trust treated your case as a safety incident — or quietly downgraded it |
| Duty of Candour record | Ask what was recorded under the trust's Duty of Candour obligations | Trusts are *legally required* to be open when care causes harm. Silence here is itself a red flag |
| Staffing rotas and bed-state records for your admission | SAR / written request; if refused, a Freedom of Information request for staffing levels that day | Only 11% of Nottingham staff said staffing was sufficient. Understaffing is powerful corroborating evidence |
| Electronic record audit trail | Ask in your SAR for the audit log showing who accessed and edited your records, and when | Late or retrospective entries after a bad outcome matter enormously. Trusts must keep these logs |
| MNSI investigation report | If your baby died or suffered a severe brain injury, an independent Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigation may exist — ask the trust, or contact MNSI directly | Independent of the trust; families are entitled to be involved |
| Post-mortem, histology and mortuary records | Request via the trust and, if there was an inquest, the coroner's office | Given the Nottingham mortuary failures — including a baby disposed of as clinical waste — verify, don't assume |
| Complaint file and internal correspondence about you | Include in your SAR: "all emails, messages and internal correspondence referring to me or my baby" | Internal discussions often say what official letters don't |
How to phrase the SAR: you don't need legal language. A dated email to the trust's Data Protection Officer saying *"I am making a subject access request under UK GDPR for all records relating to my maternity care and my baby's care, including handwritten notes, electronic records, CTG traces, incident reports, audit trails and internal correspondence"* is legally binding. If anything is missing or looks incomplete, complain to the trust's Data Protection Officer, then to the ICO.
Records arrived and they're 400 pages of medical shorthand? Caira can read them with you. Upload a page, a report or a letter and ask in plain English — "What does this mean?" "Is anything missing?" "What should I ask next?" Caira can also draft your subject access request and follow-up letters. Available 24/7.
Your Routes to Answers and Accountability
Different situations call for different routes — and you can pursue more than one at once. You don't have to choose today. Reading this list is enough for now; knowing the options exist is itself a kind of relief.
- The formal NHS complaint. Free, and the trust must investigate and respond. Normally within 12 months of the event (extendable for good reason). If the response is inadequate, escalate to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.
- The Early Notification Scheme. For babies born on or after 1 October 2023 with specific severe brain injuries, trusts must report the incident to NHS Resolution, which investigates and can pay compensation without you issuing a claim. Ask whether your case was reported — and if not, why not.
- A clinical negligence claim. You must show the care fell below acceptable professional standards *and* that this caused the harm. The time limit is 3 years from the event or from when you first realised something went wrong — but no time limit applies to claims on behalf of a child, or anyone lacking mental capacity. Many specialist firms act on a no-win, no-fee basis, and Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA) can refer you to accredited solicitors.
- The inquest. If your baby or a mother died, the coroner's inquest is a powerful route to answers. Families can ask questions of the clinicians under oath. AvMA offers free support with inquests.
- The police. In the most serious cases, criminal investigation is possible — Nottinghamshire Police's Operation Perth is investigating the Nottingham scandal, with arrests already made over mortuary practices.
- If you're pregnant or in hospital now: Martha's Rule gives you the right to demand an urgent review by a *different* clinical team if you believe you or your baby is deteriorating and you're not being listened to. Every participating hospital has a dedicated phone number — check posters on the ward or the trust website. Following the Nottingham report, the government committed to rolling Martha's Rule out to all maternity settings in England.
If You're Exhausted — That's the Point. Don't Let It Work.
First, be kind to yourself. Grief and trauma make paperwork feel impossible. Note the deadlines above — but remember that where a child is involved, no time limit applies to a claim at all. Going slowly is not giving up.
Baroness Valerie Amos, who chaired the 2026 national maternity investigation, described the compensation system families face as "brutal" — "weighted against them, with many families struggling to find solicitors who would take their case while the trust was able to employ senior lawyers at public expense." She has called for wholesale reform.
But the families who persist get there. The Hawkins were told there were no errors — they uncovered a systemic cover-up. More than 500 Nottingham families forced the largest maternity inquiry in NHS history into existence. As Donna Ockenden put it, the report exists because families refused to accept that "the voices of women, particularly the most vulnerable women," could be "systematically dismissed."
You don't need to be a lawyer. You don't need medical training. And you don't need to be at your strongest — you just need to take one small step, then the next. A dated written account, a subject access request, and the quiet persistence to ask "where is the incident report?" have brought down cover-ups that internal reviews were designed to protect.
Caira by Unwildered is an AI assistant designed for families navigating complex legal situations. Caira can help you understand your maternity records and investigation reports, spot what's missing, draft subject access requests and complaint letters, suggest questions to ask at meetings or an inquest, and check the deadlines that apply to your case. There are no appointments and no waiting — Caira is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Try it free for 14 days, then just £15 a month.
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Disclaimer: This article is general information, not legal, financial, or medical advice.
