A shocking maternity inquiry has revealed that midwives at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust used the acronym 'FOH' for 'Fuck off home' next to expectant mothers' names, with senior staff advising others not to be 'too kind'. But the root cause may be austerity-driven understaffing, not just sexism.
The Panorama Investigation
Panorama tonight examines the maternity unit, subject of the largest maternity inquiry in NHS history, spanning 13 years from 2012 and covering 2,500 families. The details are hair-raising: accounts of senior midwives advising others not to be 'too kind', and gut-wrenching individual cases of women being warned off coming to hospital for so long that, when one finally arrived, her baby was dead and her perineum and vaginal wall had collapsed.
Systemic Bias and Discrimination
Donna Ockenden, the senior midwife writing the Nottinghamshire report, painted a picture of conscious and spoken bias: 'There was this ongoing thing that South Asian women would complain about pain more. But I don't think it was cultural differences at all: I think it was just discrimination.' This reflects broader patriarchal baggage in medicine, where women's pain is routinely minimised and women of colour suffer most.
The Impact of Austerity
One community midwife explained that unsafe staffing levels meant disasters struck, and 'to be resilient you have to lower your compassion'. This suggests the scandal is as much about austerity as about gender bias. The concept of 'women-centred care', coined in the 1990s, never fully embraced listening to women and doing as they asked. Birth plans were often torn up, and women seeking pain relief or elective caesareans were made to feel inadequate.
A Personal Perspective
Zoe Williams reflects on her own experiences: 'Two things elevated this experience from horror show to bliss – three if you count the baby. First, even within a culture that treated you like a workshy drama queen, there was a huge amount of kindness and humour. Second, there was a fundamental trust that everyone would move heaven and earth for the same thing: for everyone to come out healthily the other side.'
If that changed in Nottinghamshire, it's not because human nature has changed, but because staffing levels weren't safe. The story is about women and children, but equally about austerity.
