Two Times the Risk — Why Black Mothers Are Speaking Out (and Why We Must Listen)

On 17 September 2025, the UK Health and Social Care Committee released a powerful report on Black maternal health in England.  Sadly, it confirms that Black women in England continue to face disproportionately poorer outcomes and that despite numerous efforts to address this, progress has been slow and uneven in the context of a maternity system that is failing women more broadly.

However, this isn’t just about cold statistics.  It’s about lives, grief, trust and what real compassion in care should mean.

What the report found

These are the findings that hit hardest for families, because they affect how people experience care day-to-day, not just end outcomes:

• Disproportionate risk and poor outcomes: Black women are more than twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or the postnatal period than white women.  Their babies also face higher risks of stillbirth.

• Systemic racism: The report points to racial bias, stereotyping, and discriminatory assumptions.  Black women report their concerns as often being ignored or dismissed.

• Leadership and accountability gaps: Failures in leadership (both at hospital trust level and nationally), lack of consistent oversight, and poor mechanisms for holding decision-makers to account are recurring themes.

• Training and cultural competence gaps: There is no mandatory cultural competency training for maternity staff, and the report says this must change.  Training should be informed by the lived experiences of Black women.

• Data collection gaps: Ethnicity data is inconsistently recorded.  Without reliable data, it’s hard to track where care fails, monitor improvement, or even measure progress.  The report calls for better data collection, including a maternal morbidity indicator.

How families experience care versus what compassionate care should look like:

Reading this report, what stands out are the ways in which health systems are not always acting with compassion.  For the families that we represent “compassionate care” means being listened to, feeling safe, understood, not judged, and treated as an individual.

Here are ways those expectations are not currently being met, and what could make a difference:

• Being dismissed or ignored (pain, symptoms)

• Safe, trusted channels for concerns; staff who listen first, clarify understanding, and explain decisions.

• Fear of being stereotyped or not believed

• Mandatory unconscious bias training, which focuses on staff respect, cultural, social, racial backgrounds; and no assumptions being made based on race.

• Not feeling supported before / during labour in the presence of risk(s)

• Continuity of carer who knows the history and individualised care plans that consider prior experiences / trauma.

• Lack of information or silence after a bad outcome

• Transparent investigations where families receive findings, explanations and are involved in a learning process.

• Emotional and mental health toll of unequal care

• Access to counselling and peer support which recognises trauma and grief; and a follow-up that covers both mental and physical health.

What the report recommends

Here are some of the changes the report urges – ones that, if carried out with care, could help shift experience not just outcomes:

1. Make cultural competence training mandatory across maternity services.  That means training informed by Black women’s voices / lived experience.

2. Improve data collection to ensure there is consistent and accurate ethnicity data and to create measures of maternal morbidity to track what is happening trust-by-trust.

3. Strengthen leadership and accountability.  Trusts and NHS bodies must be held to account for disparities and policy makers need to set measurable goals for equity.

4. Ensure adequate resourcing both in terms of more staff, but also workforce diversity to ensure that trusts have the capacity to deliver compassionate care.

5. Embed compassion, dignity and respect in guidelines, though patient feedback and involvement of families in designing services.

What families should look out for / demand

As a parent or prospective parents (or ally), here are things to watch for, ask about, or push for – to ensure your voice or the voices of the people you care about are heard, treated fairly and compassionately:

1. Ask whether maternity staff have had cultural competency / anti-bias training and whether it’s mandatory in your trust.

2. Continuity of carer: check if your trust provides this because it makes a difference in feeling known and heard.

3. How are concerns handled in labour?  Ask: do staff take concerns seriously?  Is there a way to escalate if you feel unsafe or ignored?

4. Access to meaningful feedback / complaint paths: is there a clear, safe, supported route to share what went wrong, or what could have been better, without fear of being dismissed?

5. Emotional support: are psychological / counselling services offered routinely for parents who’ve had bad experiences or loss?  Are there peer-support groups?

6. Transparency about outcomes: are mortality / morbidity statistics broken down by ethnicity published and how does this compare to other trusts?

Why urgent change is needed – with humanity

It’s easy to say that statistics matter.  Enough faces of loss show us they really, deeply do.  But beyond numbers, it’s what happens in the room, on the ward, when someone raises their voice, when pain is dismissed, when fears are brushed aside.  Every parent deserves dignity.  Every story deserves to be believed.

This report calls for systemic change, but at its heard it demands compassion, because without compassion, policy is just words.  With it, policy can heal, restore trust, and make maternity services places where families don’t feel they are fighting to be heard.

The real question is whether that change is deliverable?  Now is the time for action.  Change is overdue.

With the Government announcing the rapid review of maternity care at 14 NHS trusts, this MUST lead to a step change in the Government’s response to these issues, supported by sustained investment, representative leadership, mandatory and meaningful training, and a willingness to name and tackle racism where it exists.

Quote from Hannah Carr, Legal Director and Specialist Medical Negligence Solicitor from MDS, said “The Black Maternal Health Report shows that real care is more than clinical care – it’s listening, understanding, and supporting families when they need it most.  We have seen first-hand how systemic failings affect Black women and their families and our experience reinforces the call to action for a system that listens, protects and provides equal care for all families.”