What is Baby Loss Awareness Week and How Can You Show Support?

Baby Loss Awareness Week is an event which runs from 9th to 15th October every year. It is run by Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity, in conjunction with 60 other charities in the UK. The week is an opportunity for parents, friends and family who have experienced baby loss through stillbirth or neonatal death to acknowledge and remember their babies.

This awareness week aims to break the silence and the stigma around baby loss to try to increase the quality of care that families receive when they need it most.

As experienced medical negligence solicitors, we often handle stillbirth and neonatal death compensation claims, making this cause close to our hearts.

Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Statistics

Sands and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have looked into the prevalence of stillbirths and neonatal deaths and it is estimated that, in the UK, 15 babies die before, during or soon after birth every day.

In 2017, one in every 238 births was a stillbirth and there were 2,131 neonatal deaths. Although these numbers have reduced slightly over the last ten years, these statistics are still too high. Baby Loss Awareness Week 2019 aims to raise money to fund vital research to try and lower these figures and save lives.

Despite ongoing research, baby loss remains a large problem in the UK. We hope that our work at Enable Law, along with the work of the many charities, will help to reduce the prevalence of stillbirth and neonatal deaths by raising awareness and ensuring that policies and procedures are put in place to make sure the same mistakes don’t happen again in the future.

How to support Baby Loss Awareness Week

If you would like to get involved with Baby Loss Awareness Week 2019, there are lots of ways to show your support. You can buy and wear a pink and blue ribbon badge, or download and print a poster from the Baby Loss website.

The most important contribution to be made, however, is just that of talking about baby loss. If you’ve been affected, talk to friends and family about what happened, and how you’re feeling now. If you know someone else who has been affected, give them an opportunity to open up.

Baby Loss Awareness Week will conclude with the global “Wave of Light” on 15 October, when supporters are asked to light a candle at 7pm local time to commemorate all the lives that have been lost to stillbirth and neonatal death.

How We Can Help

Enable Law works with and supports several charities involved in Baby Loss Awareness Week, including Sands and Aching Arms.

We understand that the loss of a baby can leave a family with many unanswered questions and has a huge impact on the family’s life for ever more. Sometimes these questions point towards a loss that should not have occurred had proper treatment been provided by the medical practitioners. That’s why we support Sands and all the other baby loss charities during Baby Loss Awareness Week and throughout the year as they provide additional care and support to find answers to these questions, and ensure that this burden does not have to be carried alone.

We pride ourselves on finding answers and ensuring that lessons are learned by the hospitals involved. We understand that bringing a medical negligence case is rarely about the money, but about making sure that this does not happen again.

Have You Been Affected by Similar Circumstances?

If you believe that the treatment you received may have been negligent, then we can support you in looking into this and obtaining some answers for you and your loved ones. Please do contact our empathetic and experienced solicitors to learn more about neonatal and stillbirth compensation claims.

You can also show your support on social media using #BLAW2019.