Updated 6 January 2023
We inspected the maternity service at Blackburn Birth Centre as part of our national maternity inspection programme. The programme aims to give an up-to-date view of hospital maternity care across the country and help us understand what is working well to support learning and improvement at a local and national level.
We will publish a report of our overall findings when we have completed the national inspection programme.
We carried out a short notice announced focused inspection of the maternity service, looking only at the safe and well-led key questions.
The inspection was carried out using a post-inspection data submission and an on-site inspection where we observed the environment, observed care, conducted interviews with patients and staff, reviewed policies, care records medicines charts and documentation. Following the site visit, we conducted interviews with senior leaders and reviewed feedback from women and families about the trust.
We ran a poster campaign during our inspection to encourage pregnant women and mothers who had used the service to give us feedback regarding care. We received 23 feedback forms from women. We analysed the results to identify themes and trends.
Blackburn Birth Centre is a stand-alone midwife led birth centre. It has 4 birthing rooms, 2 of which have pools and a 4-bedded rest area. Ante and postnatal clinics are also provided at this location and it is the base for community midwives. It provides maternity services to women in the Blackburn, Burnley, Pendle, Rossendale, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley areas.
The local maternity population come from higher levels than deprivation than the national average with 34% in the most deprived decile compared to 12% nationally. More mothers were Asian or Asian British (24% compared to the national average of 14%) and fewer were White than the national average. Since February 2022, the trust has been in the upper 25% of all organisations for women who were current smokers at booking appointment.
Maternity services across the trust delivered 5,857 babies between January and December 2021. Blackburn Birth Centre delivered 94 babies between April 2021 and March 2022.
We did not rate this unit at this inspection. The previous rating of good remains.
We also inspected 2 other maternity services run by East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust. Our reports are here:
Burnley General Hospital – https://www.cqc.org.uk/location/RXR10
Rossendale Primary Care Centre - https://www.cqc.org.uk/location/RXRE9
How we carried out the inspection
You can find further information about how we carry out our inspections on our website: https://www.cqc.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-do-our-job/what-we-do-inspection.