If you had your maternity and/or neonatal care in Shropshire or Telford and Wrekin, your Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate is Liane Powell.

Liane can support people who have been through a distressing experience during their maternity and/or neonatal care.

She can help to support you if:

• Your baby died before or during labour, after more than 24 weeks of pregnancy (known as stillbirth).
• Your baby died within 28 days of being born.
• The person who gave birth died.
• You had a hysterectomy (your womb was removed) within 6 weeks of giving birth, and you did not expect this to happen.
• You were cared for on the Intensive Care Unit or High Dependency Unit, and you did not expect this to happen.
• You were told your baby has or might have a brain injury.

Whether this is something that happened recently or some time ago, Liane might be able to help. You don’t need to be sure that something went wrong during your care or the care of your loved one to ask for support.

Liane will help make sure your voice is heard by the hospital or place involved in caring for you or your baby. She will make sure that you are supported. You don’t have to use Liane’s service if you don’t want to, and you can stop contact with her at any time without giving a reason.

Liane does not work for The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust and does not live in the area. This means she is independent of the Trust and does not have a personal relationship with anyone who works there.

Liane works for NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin (NHS STW). NHS STW is the organisation that arranges the care that is provided in your area. They also work with regional and national teams where care is very specialised (for example intensive care for babies who are under 28 days old).

The MNISA role is part of a new trial across England which will run until March 2026. After this, the NHS will look at whether the trial has been helpful to those who have had distressing experiences during their maternity and/or neonatal care.

If Liane is still supporting you at the end of the trial, she will work out a new plan with you and her team. They will make sure you carry on getting the support you need.

The plan to introduce MNISAs was put into place because of important reports (like the Ockenden Review) in some parts of England. These reports show that those who had distressing experiences in their maternity and/or neonatal care in the past were not always listened to. Care did not always get better, and this needs to change.

Liane can support you in different ways, including:

• Find the best people for you to speak to about your experience. She can also come to meetings with you.
• Explain ways you can find out more about what happened during your care.
• Help you to make sense of how hospitals might look at what happened.
• Help you to tell someone you are unhappy about your care, and/or that you want to ask more questions.
• Find more support for you if you need it.

Liane can also give you information about other services if she thinks they might be better in helping you.

What you choose to tell Liane is confidential. This means she won’t share what you say to her with anyone else unless you say she can.

It might help you to be heard and get the right support if Liane talks about your experience with the right people. It can also help teams learn how to make things better for the future.

If Liane is worried about your safety, or someone else’s safety, she would have to tell someone what you shared with her. Even then, she would talk about this with you first.

Sometimes, one of Liane’s team might help her to check if there are any messages from you that she needs to reply to. This person must follow the same rules as Liane does around sharing your information.

A different service might be better for your needs if:

• Your concerns or the support you need are not related to experiencing one of the distressing events mentioned above.
• You have general questions about maternity or neonatal services.

Liane is a midwife and has lots of experience supporting women, birthing people, and families to talk about their pregnancy and birth experiences. Lots of the improvements Liane introduced were because of poor outcomes and the lived experiences of women and birthing people.

She is committed to making sure that people are listened to and receive safe, personalised, and high-quality care.

Before being a MNISA, Liane worked as:

• A regional Continuity of Carer Midwife where she provided advice to maternity units across the Midlands. This was to encourage safer care based on a relationship of trust and respect between women and their midwives.
• A National Education Manager in the NHS Screening programmes.
• A National Freedom to Speak Up Guardian.
• A Senior midwife, where she introduced Vaginal Birth After Caesarean, Birth Reflections and antenatal and newborn screening services.

Liane is also an Independent Panel Member of the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s Fitness to Practise committee. Her qualifications include a master’s degree in public health and a postgraduate certificate in organisational change in health care.

Liane understands that it is very hard to share such distressing experiences. She is always so thankful when someone feels able to trust her with their thoughts and experience and she is very willing to help or support you wherever possible. Liane is happy to tell you more about her career or experience and how she keeps up her independence.

Liane’s service is free - you do not have to pay for her support. She can arrange for an interpreter if needed.

Call or text: 07818 016383

Email: stw.mnisa@nhs.net

Or you can complete the contact form at the bottom of this webpage.

You can also ask any healthcare worker involved in your maternity or neonatal care to contact Liane on your behalf. For example, you might ask a midwife, nurse, doctor, health visitor or mental health worker.

If you are unhappy with the support Liane has provided or with the MNISA service, you can speak to someone about this or make a complaint by sending an email to stw.patientservices@nhs.net

For more information, please click here.