MBE for Guilsfield man after heartbreaking maternity campaign

When Colin Griffiths, formerly from Guilsfield, and his wife Kayleigh lost their new-born daughter in the most tragic of circumstances in 2016, they knew that they couldn’t let another family go through the same heartache as them.

Pippa, the couple’s second child, was born at home after they felt their first birth, Brooke, at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital in 2011 was not the most pleasant of experiences.

Home births are encouraged and the couple felt confident that the support offered amongst familiar and comfortable surroundings was a better option than their disappointing entry into the world of parenthood.

Sadly, due to the now well-documented incompetence from the hospital’s maternity unit, Pippa died the day after birth with the couple becoming the latest in a lengthening list of families who needlessly lost their children under the watch of the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals Trust (SATH).

The rest is now history, with the couple leading the campaign for the truth despite the Trust’s best efforts to silence them. Their story is one of horror, with accusations of being bullied, vilified, and shouted down in meetings to be silenced. But they never gave up and, last week, both Colin, the son of Pete and Avril Griffiths, and Kayleigh, along with Rhiannon Davies and Richard Stanton, who lost their child in 2009, were awarded MBEs for uncovering the truth and forcing change.

They carried on fighting with impressive tenacity as the years rolled on and in 2017, they persuaded Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt to commission an independent review of Shropshire’s maternity services, and last year the shocking Ockenden report was released. 

The review found that 201 babies and nine mothers had died who could have survived if they had received better care.

We spoke to Colin this week and, here, he has shared his family’s harrowing story.

“We had our first child Brooke, now 11, at Shrewsbury and were not happy with the experience, so this is why we elected for a home birth with Pippa as you got two dedicated midwives and we would not be giving birth in a rundown building.

“So, Pip was our second child and was born at home on April 26, 2016. The birth went as planned, just some of the midwife’s equipment didn’t work like the thermometer and a lack of oxygen.

“Without going into great detail, Pippa didn’t feed that well which, we were assured over the phone by the midwife, that was normal. Then she was bringing up mucus again, so another call and we were told again that was normal.

“Kayleigh made calls through the night about the feeding and mucus but were again told it was fine and that a midwife would be out first thing in the morning. This didn’t happen.

“Then, later on in the day when I was getting Brooke ready for our parents to visit, Kay screamed for me to come downstairs and Pippa was lifeless on her lap from a group B strep infection and sepsis. That’s when our world turned upside down.

“Kay at that time worked for the NHS as an auditor so understood the processes that should have taken place after a serious incident, so when SATH said there would only be an internal investigation and that we would not be involved in it, that’s when the alarm bells started ringing.

“SATH closed up on us and that’s when we started looking into other deaths and we made contact with Richard and Rhiannon Stanton whose daughter Kate died because of the Trust’s ill care.

“The Trust were in denial that there was an issue with patient safety and made out that we were scaremongers. We were kept out of stakeholder meetings and escorted away by police at one building when we campaigned outside. The four of us put our names to a letter and sent it to then health secretary Jeremy Hunt with findings of a number of avoidable deaths at SATH and he listened to us and the Ockenden report was commissioned.

“Life these days is us trying to live as normal a life as possible. I run an Air Conditioning business that gets hectic in summer but gives me lots of time to spend with my son Sonny six, and Brooke 11. We live in a small village in North Shropshire. Kay has gone back into the NHS as a performance development manager which she really loves and was recently called to be on the panel that did the interviews for the new head midwife for England and Wales.

“Things had been pretty normal until six weeks ago when we both received the letter asking if we would like to receive the MBE honours for services to maternity healthcare.

“There was an embargo until June 17, so we couldn’t event tell our parents and kids. We are all looking forward to going to London to receive the honour itself. It all feels very surreal but very nice that we can dedicate them to our little girl, Pippa.”