BASILDON Hospital's maternity unit now has a full compliment of staff and no midwife vacancies, councillors have heard.

The mid and Southend Essex Hospital Trust's director of midwifery gave an update on improving maternity services at Basildon Hospital following a Care Quality Commission (CQC) rating of "requires improvement" following an inspection in March 2024.

A report to Thurrock Council's people scrutiny committee last week revealed 25 newly qualified midwives were recruited but Debbie Goldsmith told the committee there are now no vacancies and staff are staying put.

Speaking of the CQC rating, she said: "In terms of staffing, this report is nearly a year old. We have no vacancies at Basildon.

"Historically, when I joined the trust there was a 25 per cent vacancy rate at Basildon. This demonstrates our improving culture. All of our students are with us now. We don't see them leaving after they've finished their training.

Ms Goldsmith said it had never been the case the unit lacked the necessary equipment but that it had not been in the right place at the right time. This had been rectified and other improvements in triaging patients had since been implemented.

Ms Goldsmith added: "We're being responsive to our families when they feel the need to write to us when they haven't received the care perhaps they wanted to.

"At Basildon, we didn't have a dedicated midwife that would man the triage phone. This is for patients ringing for advice – for example, 'I might be heavily pregnant, my baby's not moving'.

"We've put a dedicated triage midwife in our triage department to ensure all calls that come through are answered and are monitored appropriately."

Cici Manwa, Labour councillor for Tilbury Riverside and Thurrock Park, asked Ms Goldsmith what was being done to protect black women who are nationally 3.7 times more likely to die during childbirth than white women.

Ms Goldsmith said: "Last year we did a deep dive into maternal deaths across MSE and the way that maternal deaths are reported is either within pregnancy up to 28 days after and then within a year.

"We reviewed all of those cases and ironically all of them were Caucasian but we're working with our vulnerable teams, particularly at Basildon, because of the demographics and the population that we serve."

Ms Goldsmith added: "We offer all patients a personalised care plan with their midwives but we've acknowledged we do need to do more work with women from certain cultures that are more likely to have a poor outcome and I do acknowledge we need to progress that further."