The Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme (known as MatNeoSIP) is led by NHS England and Improvement. Previously known as the Maternal and Neonatal Health Safety Collaborative, it was renamed following the launch of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy in July 2019. You can find out more about the National MatNeo SIP here.
Programme aims
- Contribute to the national ambition, set out in Better Births, to reduce the rates of maternal and neonatal deaths, stillbirths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth by 50% by 2025.
- Contribute to the national ambition, set out in Safer Maternity Care, to reduce the national rate of preterm births from 8% to 6%.
- Improve the safety and outcomes of maternal and neonatal care by reducing unwarranted variation and provide a high-quality healthcare experience for all women, babies and families across maternity and neonatal care settings in England.
Programme objectives
How we are supporting MatNeoSIP locally:
Local Learning System
| Deterioration | Optimisation |
In Wessex, the focus of work is a Local Learning System (improvement forum), which has been set up to enable our maternity systems, units, and clinicians to collaborate and work together to improve services and reduce avoidable harm to mothers and babies.
| Early recognition and management of deterioration of women and babies through: - testing MEWS at a system level
- examining the current MatNeo Prevent, Identify, Escalate, and Respond (PIER) pathway
- supporting the adoption and spread of the neonatal early warning 'trigger and track' score (NEWTT2)
| Optimisation and stabilisation of the preterm infant through: - birth in the right place
- antenatal administration of magnesium sulphate
- antenatal corticosteroids
- intravenous antibiotics
- delayed cord clamping
- thermoregulation
- early breast milk
Optimisation of the preterm infant is being supported by a care bundle from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine (BAPM), which is known locally as PREM 7. |
You can see examples of our work through our Case Studies.
Who we're working with:
As well as working with the above partners, we host three quarterly networks to support quality improvement capacity & capability, sharing insights, reducing inequalities and variation in practice, co-production, culture, measurement for improvement and facilitating behaviour change:
- Wessex Antenatal Care Pathway network.
- Wessex Intrapartum Care Network.
- Wessex Maternity Triage Network.
We are a group of individuals who band together to share our knowledge and expertise, to learn from each other to strengthen our capabilities. The ambition for our network is serve as a community of practice for the delivery of actionable improvement for the women, birthing people, their babies, and families.
The aim of these network is to deliver a set of standardised pathways to be used across Wessex for maternity care, to support early recognition of deterioration, reduce variations in practice, and improve patient safety/
You can view the Antenatal Care Pathway pack on the Wessex Healthier Together website here and you can view a poster detailing our involvement in the resources tab to the right of the page.
Local Work and Resources to Help with Quality Improvement in Maternity
There are a number of examples of local improvement projects that have already had an impact on maternity care that can be found
here or in the resources section to the right of this page. We have also published a number of case studies which can be found
here.
Current quality improvement projects include:
- Equity and equality project
Funded by NHSE SW, we supporting the spread of a quality improvement project initiated in Southampton. The project focuses on equity of access to appropriate equipment for expressing maternal breastmilk.
You can find more information on this project, along with a toolkit to replicate this work in your own healthcare setting, here. - Preterm birth information project
We are currently working with Thames Valley and Wessex Neonatal Operational Delivery Network (TVW NODN) on a joint project between Oxford Portsmouth and Southampton for improvement of Preterm birth information for women, birthing people, and their families. - Coaching Project
In 2022 Wessex Patient Safety Collaborative (PSC) initiated and developed a co-designed coaching offer to support the delivery of the MatNeo Safety Improvement Programme objectives focusing on optimisation of the preterm infant. The aim was to create a high performing team through increasing psychological safety, open and supportive communication, civility, and team working within the perinatal preterm optimisation teams leading to improved experiences and project progression. Full evaluation report can be found here or in the resources section to the right of this page.
National Work and Resources
As our work is part of a National Programme we have found a number of resources that may be of interest and help you deliver local projects. These can be found
here or in the resources section to the right of this page.
Other useful links
Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: Three Pās in a POD - Preventing Maternal Deaths:
