Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Midwife who led the investigation into the biggest maternity scandal in NHS history, publishing the Ockenden Review.
On the island
Eight records
It represents the love that my parents had for each other at that time.
as a little girl, the BCR, as they were known, the Bay City Rollers, and all of the girls in my school, in Blangwa primary school, were absolutely mad on them.
This was a song that Nanny Beryl would sing when she was applying her lipstick to go down to town.
It links my two or three occasions when I lived in the Middle East... this song talks about, and our prayers will be heard to fill the air.
It's a song called If Only by Hazel O'Connor, and it comes from the film Breaking Glass... and it was a song that somehow resonated with me and it kept me going.
I Can See Clearly NowFavourite
It sums up where I am in my life today. I always dance... in my kitchen when I hear it. And it just makes me realize how far I've come.
It links my mother and father's early life... a male-voice choir sang to my parents to remind them that whatever happened they'd always be welcome in Wales.
This is a song for me that causes me to reflect on where I've come from and where I am today. It talks about my life being a storm since I was born.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:28How do you keep your own feelings in check when you're supporting families through the worst day of their lives?
There were times in Shrewsbury when I would make these visits to Shrewsbury on my own, and I would go back to my hotel bedroom and cry. … However, I suppose since then I've learnt that when I do those family visits, although I might be in the room with the family on my own, I always now have a member of my team with me. … And then I think it is about honouring the families and honouring the babies or sometimes the mothers who are not with them. … As a young midwife, I learned a lot from hospital chaplains. And one particular hospital chaplain in Portsmouth spoke to me as I started my career as a bereavement midwife. And he said to me, You know, you have to learn you cannot carry everyone's suitcase of grief around with you, because if you do that, Don, you're going to be weighed down by that suitcase.
Presenter asks
3:52How did you feel the night before the Ockenden report was released?
I just thought I have given this my all, my team have given this their all. Many of the parents came to the launch and were with me when we watched Sajid Javid make the announcement about accepting all of the findings, and there was a huge cheer in the room when he did that. So I hope that those parents and those families feel that it was a job well done.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Charlotte Brontë
I'm going to take with me Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, because that was my first grown up book after graduating from Lady Bird Books.
The luxury
a lipstick called ribbon, which is red
I think it's something that I took from the days of Nanny Beryl, a red lipstick to walk into Aberdare. And I never start a day without my ribbon lipstick.
Where did your mother's problems stem from?
Unfortunately, from the very earliest age until she married my dad. She endured a life of tyranny and depravity at the hands of her father and her mother. And the trauma that she experienced, I think it's true to say stayed with her until the day she died in twenty twenty one. Was it physical abuse? Is it sexual abuse? Everything. Yeah.
Presenter asks
14:36What effect did all of this have on you? Did you become a kind of second mum?
Yes, I did. And even now, so I'm fifty eight, I'm the oldest and my siblings are all younger than me, there is still a tendency in in our family to say, well, let's ask Don, what does Donna think? And we are really close. We're in touch every day. Despite everything that we went through as children, we remain really, really close and together.
Presenter asks
31:46Baby Gina's death was a huge turning point for you. Why was that? What happened?
I was a newly qualified midwife. I'd been qualified for less than a year, and I came on a late shift. … I helped them cuddle Gina, bath her, put her best dress on and she died about half past six that evening … I made a little promise to Gina that no matter how long or how short my career would be in maternity, every day I would try and do something to make a difference, to make maternity care safer for mothers and babies. And I called it my Gina promise.
Presenter asks
36:41What shocked you most about what you discovered in the Ockenden Review?
It was the way that women and families were treated, it was the way they were not listened to, and the cases that resonate with me were when parents were lied to. And in some cases, mothers were blamed for their own deaths. … I had met with family after family in Shrewsbury, and heard that, and surviving children, and heard them say Well, if I thought, if I hadn't been born, that mum would still be here and therefore it was my fault. I've said to a number of families, This is not your blame or your guilt to carry, it's not you.
“I just thought I have given this my all, my team have given this their all.”
“I lived in fear for the whole two years of my A levels.”
“I made a little promise to Gina that no matter how long or how short my career would be in maternity, every day I would try and do something to make a difference, to make maternity care safer for mothers and babies.”
“I hope that she died knowing that she was loved. She had spent her life looking for love and I hope that she felt it.”
“I'm not a completed article. My work, there's still so much to do, but onwards and upwards.”