{"id":660467,"date":"2026-06-27T03:31:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T03:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/660467\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T03:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T03:31:15","slug":"how-messages-between-two-dads-helped-expose-the-largest-nhs-maternity-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/660467\/","title":{"rendered":"How messages between two dads helped expose the largest NHS maternity scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gary and Sarah Andrews&#8217;s daughter Wynter died 23 minutes after she was delivered by Caesarean section at the Queen&#8217;s Medical Centre on 15 September 2019 after repeated warning signs of her being in distress had been missed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wynter died from a loss of oxygen flow to the brain &#8211; which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-nottinghamshire-54452810\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">an inquest<\/a> found could have been prevented had staff delivered her earlier.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sarah, 41, had been admitted to hospital on 14 September, six days after initially experiencing contractions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The inquest heard the maternity unit was &#8220;busy&#8221; when she arrived, with information on the patient&#8217;s history not properly handed over to other staff at shift changes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The inquest found Wynter may have survived if &#8220;multiple missed opportunities&#8221; had been spotted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In what would become a recurring theme about warning signs being missed, the coroner cited a 2018 letter from midwives to bosses at the trust, outlining concerns over staffing levels as &#8220;the cause of a potential disaster&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The grim predictions&#8230; were indeed realised some 10 months later when Wynter died as a result of the unsafe practices warned about,&#8221; coroner Laurinda Bower said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Care Quality Commission (CQC) prosecuted NUH over Wynter&#8217;s death in January 2023, with the trust pleading guilty to care failures.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The criminal prosecution <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-nottinghamshire-64422598\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">resulted in NUH being fined \u00a3800,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gary and Sarah Andrews&#8217;s daughter Wynter died 23 minutes after she was delivered by Caesarean section at the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-660467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}