We strive for a world where fewer babies die. We’ve made great progress, but there’s more to do. Almost every two hours, parents like Priya and Kevin face the devastating death of their baby. We know that many baby deaths could be prevented through a combination of targeted research and better care, informed by good hospital review processes. 

On average, 13 babies a day are stillborn or die within four weeks of birth in the UK. That’s 296 fewer baby deaths in 2020 than in 2019. But because there are also fewer births overall year on year, that means stillbirth and neonatal death rates remain relatively unchanged.  

That’s why we continue to focus on understanding how to save babies’ lives and applying it to practice. In our own right and in collaboration with others, we research, review, audit, influence and campaign. And at the heart of our work are parents’ voices – making sure their experiences are heard, understood and learned from.

#BecauseOfYou
We supported research to understand how pregnant women use websites and apps to identify possible complications during their pregnancies and shared the findings with healthcare professionals to help them better support women’s choices and discuss safety concerns.

Research with parents
at its heart

Helping deliver better outcomes  
We have supported 56 much-needed research studies dedicated to reducing the number of babies dying and improving bereavement care. Our support spanned funding for researchers as well as facilitating parents', healthcare professionals’ and others’ participation in studies. We joined research teams, helped develop new ideas and worked to ensure the implementation of research findings.

We make sure parents are at the heart of research projects and their voices are heard. By listening to parents and collaborating with researchers, we can be sure the studies conducted this year and beyond will improve outcomes and take us one step closer to a world where fewer babies die.

Listening to parents to
save lives

Supporting a learning culture
At Sands, we ensure parents’ unique insights about every aspect of their experience of care drive maternity safety initiatives. This year, we supported the development of a pathway and resources to support healthcare professionals to more meaningfully engage parents in the review of their baby’s death so that lessons are learned and mistakes are not repeated. Our training in using these resources and communicating with parents has been delivered to over 2,825 wide-ranging professionals from consultant neonatologists to chaplains and midwives across the country.

Supporting parents during maternity investigations
We put bereaved parents front and centre by supporting NHS trusts involved in maternity safety investigations to improve their care.  We supported grieving families and shared expert advice with clinicians on bereavement care, delivering training workshops and carrying out an audit of bereavement care that made recommendations to support continuous improvement.

Campaigning for change
with others

Supporting women pregnant again after loss
Care from the same midwife or small team of midwives throughout pregnancy and birth has been shown to save lives and create emotional and psychological safety for parents. This is particularly important when a baby dies, or for those who are pregnant following loss. We campaigned to ensure that women pregnant again after the death of a baby are prioritised for this sort of personalised care. Over 2,000 campaigners emailed their MP, MSP, MS or MLA about this and we received commitments from governments across the UK to consider how those pregnant after loss can access this type of care.

Reducing inequalities 
Sands estimates that had stillbirth and neonatal death rates for black and Asian babies been the same as for white babies, 432 fewer babies would have died in 2019 in England and Wales. As a result, we called for the Government to urgently fund an enquiry into Asian and British Asian baby deaths in the UK, as they are for black and black British baby deaths. Nearly 1,000 Sands campaigners emailed their MP in support. Our campaign was successful with the potential to save hundreds of lives every year.

Working in partnership to save babies’ lives
Launching the Sands and Tommy’s Joint Policy Unit this year was a critical step forward in ensuring the best care for parents and babies, no matter who they are or where they live. The risk of babies dying should not be influenced by their parents’ postcode, ethnicity or income. Yet it is. So, we’re working together to halve the number of UK baby deaths by ensuring decision-makers have access to up-to-date information and maternity policy is informed by robust evidence. By pooling our skills and sharing our collective expertise, we will improve outcomes for families.

Leading coalitions to improve care
This year also marked the start of Sands and Tommy’s co-leading the Maternity Consortium to improve maternity care for all communities. At its heart is reducing health inequalities for families throughout the whole pregnancy journey. With our partners, National Maternity Voices, Pregnancy and Baby Charities Network, Five X More CIC, Muslim Women’s Network UK and LGBT Mummies, we’re joining up national and local voices to influence policy decisions based on the lived experiences of bereaved parents.

This year we carried out a service user survey, focus groups, and interviews to understand the barriers to accessing maternity services for groups at risk of poorer outcomes. We listened to black, Asian and Minority Ethnic women and birthing people, bereaved parents, parents with involvement from social services, parents with a learning disability or learning difficulty, and refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women and birthing people. Our findings were shared with healthcare professionals and policymakers to showcase service user experiences, allowing them to understand the barriers different groups face and reflect on where they can make changes to improve inclusivity and accessibility of their services. In particular, we hope that Local Maternity Systems will use the resources when developing their local Equity and Equality plans.

Working with Parliament
Sands became the secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Baby Loss. This group of MP and Peers is an important voice for the baby loss community in Parliament. It is instrumental in raising awareness of what more can be done by the Government and other agencies to improve care for families after pregnancy loss or the death of a baby and to save babies’ lives.

We supported the APPG to run two parliamentary debates in Westminster; one on progress toward delivering the Government's ambition to halve rates of baby death, and one for Baby Loss Awareness Week. More than three thousand people emailed their MP for Truro and Falmouth about the second debate and 22 MPs attended. The responding Minister reiterated the Government's support for the National Bereavement Care Pathway in response to both debates.

Our expertise also contributed to the launch of a joint campaign with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Maternity for safer staffing in maternity care.

Joining forces for better care
We continued to collaborate with 21 other pregnancy and baby charities through the Pregnancy and Baby Charity Network. Together we launched the network’s nation-specific manifesto setting out its four priorities for fewer babies’ lives lost and better care for families. The manifesto was successfully used during the Scottish and Welsh elections, acknowledging that a focus on safety, bereavement care and reducing inequalities is needed.

Auditing and collaboration

Amplifying parents’ voices  
Ensuring the lived experiences of parents and families shape improvements is central to our work. We continue to do this through membership of MBRRACE-UK (Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK), the Maternity Transformation Stakeholder Council, the Steering Group of the National Child Mortality Database, the Scottish Stillbirth Group and the Scottish Perinatal Network. In all the initiatives we have ensured that bereaved parents’ unique insights have shaped maternity safety initiatives.

Thanks to our community of amazing Sands supporters and the hard work of our passionate fundraising team, we ended the year financially strong, giving us the confidence to start growing again after contracting in response to Covid-19. We do so cautiously with well-considered plans to grow safely and sustainably to future-proof our income generation and the work it enables. Our culture and values were integral to successfully and compassionately raising our profile and generating funds, and they continue to sit at the core of our approach to income generation.

Building the Sands team  
We have renewed optimism and an appetite for doing more, better. For families needing our help today, and parents needing somewhere to turn tomorrow, we’re committed to being here for them when they need us. That’s why we have invested in team and technological resources required to grow and sustain our income and to engage with all our supporters in the way that suits them best.

Our hugely valuable supporters are at the heart of everything we do. We aim to continue to grow Sands by connecting our supporters to the impact they can and do make on saving babies' lives and supporting bereaved parents.

Doing more, better: introducing Sands Strategy 2022-2025

Our vision is for a world where fewer babies die and, when a baby does die, families like David’s receive the best possible care and support for as long as they need. That remains unchanged, yet the world around us is changing. So, this year we developed and launched a new strategy that reflects and responds to those changes.

Shaping the strategy with our Sands community
We asked, we listened to, and we learnt from bereaved families, supporters, volunteers, and others with a stake in what we’re trying to achieve. Your experiences and views shaped the new strategy. It’s our compass to help us build on what we’ve already achieved and our guide to what we do next. The strategy sets out our strategic focus for the next four years:

1) To be a welcoming, supportive community which is inclusive, accessible, and known to all.

2) To save babies’ lives and ensure inequalities in pregnancy loss and baby death are reduced.

3) To ensure everyone has equal access to excellent bereavement care and support after pregnancy loss and baby death.

4) To grow and develop sustainably to have impact now and in the future.

Our first priority: Extending our lifeline
Building Sands as a welcoming and supportive community is one of our first priorities. Sands is a lifeline for many no matter how they engage with us or their relationship with Sands. But we know there are people missing out on support. Some don’t know we exist. Others don’t think Sands is right for them. While some people believe they don’t belong in our community because of their background. We’re here for everyone and we’ve already started exploring how to reach more local and diverse communities to make sure everyone knows they can turn to us for support. And true to our values, we’re listening to how people want to feel part of the Sands community to make sure whatever we do next puts them first. Already, listening events and surveys have resulted in a review of the membership model.