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Plea:

We would like to begin by sharing the view of one of our many mums experience of the Honeysuckle Bereavement Team.

I came into contact with the Honeysuckle Team at Liverpool Women’s Hospital after suffering my third miscarriage and losing my fourth baby. After attending various meetings at the hospital I became involved with the team and its volunteers, meeting on a regular basis. The team have supported me by arranging events for women and families who experience baby loss. The team have also set up a monthly support group for women to be able to talk in a safe environment about their loss. As baby loss and miscarriage are still taboo subjects this has helped me and other mums on our journey through grief. The team’s work has brought a community of mums together – and despite our “club”  being one that none of us really wants to be a member of – we have made some lifelong friends along the way. The team are all friendly and very approachable. Some members of the team have also experienced the loss of a baby themselves and are therefore able to empathise with all of us and know “where we are coming from”.  I have contributed to the planning of some events with the team, along with other families, including the annual remembrance service which marks the international awareness day for baby loss and the Wave of Light. This also helps women and families who experience devastating baby loss by letting them know that they are not alone. I wish that the team had been in place to support me when I lost my babies.

 

Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust is dedicated to the healthcare of women and babies. Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust is one of only two women’s hospitals in the UK and the largest women’s hospital in Europe. We provide clinical expertise in maternity, gynaecology, neonatal, reproductive medicine and clinical genetics. Within maternity services over 8100 babies are born each year.

 

The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team provide care for women and their families at Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust following the death of their baby as a result of early miscarriage (this includes molar and ectopic pregnancies), late miscarriage, termination of pregnancy due to fetal abnormality at any gestation (a lot of our families like to refer to this as compassionate induction), stillbirth and babies who die shortly after birth.

 

The Trust bereavement service has evolved over a number of years into the Honeysuckle Bereavement Team. We are all passionate about the care we provide to families and are committed to treating all babies, parents and their families with compassion, dignity, empathy and respect. We enables women and families to create positive memories at such an emotional time in their lives. Our women, babies and families are at the heart of everything we do.

 

The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team has been established since January 2015. As the team has developed over this time there has been a growing acknowledgment across the Trust to further strengthen and support the service to enable the identity and meaning behind the Honeysuckle Bereavement Team to be more widely known internally and externally.

 

As a result the team have been given designated office space which also provides a hub for staff and families to drop in at any time for help, advice and support. Our office is based on the ground floor of the Trust and is open Monday – Friday 8am – 4pm; however the team are extremely flexible with their working hours to meet the individual needs of our families. This includes weekends if required.

 

The name honeysuckle was chosen for our team because of its meaning ‘bond of love’ in the language of flowers and in addition it’s meaning has no religious or cultural connotations. “There is no footprint too small that it cannot leave an imprint on this world” is a quote all our team share and lead by.

 

Our team consists of 5 members:

Gillian Walker – Honeysuckle Team Manager

Mandy Chesworth – Bereavement Support Nurse
Marie Kelleher – Bereavement Support Midwife
Pauline McBurnie – Bereavement Support Midwife
Sarah Martin – Bereavement Support Officer

 

As part of our governance arrangements a robust database is kept detailing all the names of the babies entrusted into our care. We also have a special Honeysuckle Room (modified mortuary) where all babies are kept safe and secure with only limited access. The team’s priority every morning is to check on every baby in the Honeysuckle Room. The team keep contemporaneous records, and this provides assurance and due diligence to the Trust regarding our systems, processes and legal requirements. Subsequently this reassures families that their babies are safe in our care.

 

The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team work in partnership with our Gynaecology, Maternity and Neonatal departments within the hospital to ensure we get things right first time, every time, all the time, to be remembered for the right reasons, not forgotten because we failed to meet a family’s expectations.

 

Training and development of staff in all aspects of bereavement care within the Trust is of paramount importance of The Honeysuckle Team. The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team devised a training package which is presented at junior doctors’ induction and the team also attend a clinical teaching session once a month with the junior doctors to provide a forum for discussion and education. The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team met with the practise education facilitator following numerous requests from individual student midwives and nurses to spend time with the Team as part of their training. This has resulted in an educational audit taking place with the local university, enabling students to now have 2 week placements with the team.

 

There are two bereavement rooms (Buttercup and Snowdrop) on the central delivery suite. Currently work is being undertaken to refurbish the room as a result of feedback from our families. The kind generosity of people who have donated monies to us will be used.

 

The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team support the midwifery and medical staff on Delivery Suite on a daily basis, there is also a special room on Delivery Suite that has been created by the team, this contains memory boxes, camera equipment, baby clothes, stationery and flow charts and relevant documentation that is easily accessible for staff when required. The room is regularly checked and stocked by the team.

 

The team are constantly looking at how we can break down barriers with regard to the taboo subject of baby death at any stage of pregnancy. Following feedback from our women and families, Honeysuckle Bereavement signs have now been purchased and will be displayed in the main entrance and other parts of entry into the hospital. The corridor leading to our Honeysuckle Suite is to be named Honeysuckle Lane and artwork created by our families, in conjunction with a local artist, will be displayed on the walls. We will also be opening the Honeysuckle Garden, adjacent to the Suite, in October.

 

We have also taken 2 of our patients to the monthly Trust Board meeting where supported by the Honeysuckle Bereavement Team they were able to talk about their difficult journeys. The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team are also involved and lead on the development of guidelines, policies and standard operating procedures. We are also involved with the Trust’s clinical audit department. Our families are a vital part of our team’s development and we have many patient representatives who proof read to give the team constructive feedback on our new patient leaflets and standard operating procedures.

 

Over the past year The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team have had responsibility for:

750 families who have suffered the loss of their baby before the 12^th week of pregnancy.
118 families who have suffered the loss of their baby between the 12^th and 24^th week of pregnancy.
60 families who have suffered the loss of their baby after the 24^th week of pregnancy.
44 families whose babies have passed away during the first 28 days of life.
The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team are notified of every pregnancy loss and neonatal death that occurs at Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust through and electronic system that operates 24/7. Every notification is printed out directly into the team’s office. The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team make contact with every family to offer them support. When a baby dies during pregnancy or shortly after birth they are brought to the care of the Honeysuckle Bereavement Team until funeral arrangements are made or families decide to take their baby home from the hospital.

 

Our team visit with families while they are in hospital, and provide phone calls offering practical advice and information and where appropriate will visit at home. We guide our families through the formalities involved and the difficult choices faced at such a sad time. This includes:

 

• Registration of baby’s stillbirth, birth and death – families are able to register their baby on site at Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust. The registration appointments take place within The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team’s designated office space. This is a quiet, calm, safe environment where our bereaved families do not have to wait with families who are attending with their new born babies. The team facilitated this by working in partnership with Liverpool City Council Registrar Team and the Trust IT department. The team had identified how difficult it was to go to the registrars office seeing families registering their babies and also for these families seeing how distressed our families where. The experience was not good. They can now have refreshments and extended family members present which was not previously an option. We have quarterly meetings with the Superintendent Registrar of Liverpool and have daily contact with the Liverpool City Council Registrar Team to ensure our processes are as robust as possible for our families.

• Helpful Literature – the team provide every family they meet with information leaflets they may find beneficial. The information is different depending on each family’s circumstances. The team also have special story books and information leaflets that help parents who have older children at home to explain the loss of a baby. We are able to have leaflets and letters transcribed into other languages if required to meet the needs of our families.

• We are able to sign post families to other agencies that can offer support such as counselling and family retreats.

• Blessing of baby by a hospital chaplain or local faith leaders – Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust have an on call chaplaincy team of Roman Catholic and Church of England pastoral representatives. The Honeysuckle Team can arrange for a blessing to be given to baby and provide a signed blessing certificate to acknowledge this. The team work closely with many cultural and religious faiths to support all our families.

• Examination / Testing – Families who suffer the death of their baby are offered certain tests, depending on the circumstances surrounding their loss. The testing is not completed on our site; it is carried out at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital. Our team arranges for all babies undergoing tests to be transferred from our site, collected and brought back to our team’s care by our HCA drivers.

• Our team are supported on a daily basis, when required by Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, Health Care Assistant / Out-of-Hours Driver Team and are managed by the Honeysuckle Bereavement Team’s Manager; this supports continuity for the service. The drivers are:

 

Kevin Dowd

Jeff Edwards

Stan Edwards

Peter Feeney

Sue Jackson

 

As this team is internal, we are never reliant on any outside service to be involved in the care and transportation of our special babies.

 

• Creating positive memories – Our team have a beautiful Honeysuckle Suite located on the ground floor of the hospital. The room is a comfortable home from home environment with refreshment facilities to make families feel more relaxed. Books and toys are also available for siblings if families bring their other children. There is a wardrobe in our suite, containing new baby clothes and blankets for all gestations. Families are welcome to use these as they wish – items kindly been donated from our local community.

 

This suite can be used by families wishing to spend time with their baby 24/7. We encourage families to use our suite to take time with their baby and create positive memories. We have close links with Remember My Baby charity – this is a group of professional photographers who complete photo sessions of angel babies totally free of charge to families in our Honeysuckle Suite. Our team offer memory boxes from 4Louis and special Aching Arms teddy bears to all families who have suffered the loss of a baby.

 

• Our families appreciate the memory boxes and Aching Arms bears so much as they have come from families who have also experienced the devastating loss of a baby. As examples here follows excerpts from two such letters:

 

• Thank you so much for saving me a beautiful teddy that arrived in the post today, thanks so much to you sarah for your beautiful +kind letter &to everyone in the Honeysuckle team for making a v difficult 4months a little more bearable, it means so much to me, matt &our baby son xx

 

• Thank u so much for this special teddy and my babies name on the tag u posted out. I gave the bear to my little girl who has just turned 5 because shes found this all so difficult & now has “ted” to cuddle when shes feeling sad about loosing our baby. Xx

 

• Funeral Arrangements – The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team have close links with the Liverpool Cemetery and Crematoria Team who we meet with on a regular basis to ensure we are providing families with up to date information in regards to their options for burial or cremation and we provide families with written information on arranging a funeral and will assist if requested. The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team often make the first phone calls to funeral directors on behalf of families who choose to have an individual funeral for their baby and liaise with them in relation to the collection of baby and the appropriate documentation that is needed.

 

Many families who suffer a pregnancy loss during the early stages of pregnancy consent for our team to make arrangements for a communal cremation. There are no funeral directors involved in a communal cremation and families are not able to attend. Our team makes the arrangements directly with the Liverpool Cemetery and Crematoria Team. The HCA driver transports our babies and a member of the team to the crematorium in a dignified, compassionate way. We do not use any outside means such as private ambulance for transport. The driver and team member stay while the communal cremation is carried out and a lullaby is played and the curtains are closed. Following on from a communal cremation the ashes are scattered in the baby remembrance garden within the grounds of the crematorium. Our team contacts all families who wish to be informed when the communal cremation has taken place and provide details of the whereabouts of the baby remembrance garden so they can go and visit.

 

Our team works continually on improving the experiences of our families at such a difficult time in their lives and we shape the service we provide around the feedback we are given. It is not the outcome that anyone ever wanted but it still has to be the best possible experience.

 

The Team are also undertaking continuing professional development in relation to bereavement, care and support to further enhance the care we provide.

 

Following feedback from our families we have cared for the team have developed ways in which to provide ongoing support.

 

• An informal evening support group is held on the first Wednesday of every month between 6pm and 8pm for anyone affected by the loss of a baby to come and have a chat and a cuppa with the team, but also with others who have gone through similar experiences. Families find it very therapeutic sharing their stories with others who understand exactly what they are thinking and feeling as families can feel isolated and by encouraging them to come together and by providing the right support at the right time we can try to help them rebuild their lives. Three examples follow:

• It was amazing to go to a place with other people who just…get it. They understand the pain as even the team have experienced the sad loss. To have that understanding and to know you are not alone is absolutely invaluable. My partner doesn’t like to talk about feelings too much but he even welled up at one point and said he found it really useful as well. Quote from a honeysuckle mum who attended our support group for the first time in September 2016.

• Loved the support group this evening, everyone was so lovely and we loved speaking to people and putting names to faces. We loved being able to speak about our baby girl and not have any awkward silences or people not knowing what to say back.
  Well done to everyone for getting there, you have made it this far you can make it the rest of the way. Stay strong and hopefully see you all again soon.
  ? There is no footprint too small that it cannot leave an imprint on this world ?

• Big thank you to the honeysuckle team for tonight it’s so nice what you all do to support us all, lovely meeting people again and meeting new people. It’s like the club nobody wants to be in but sadly we are all part of that club now and it’s so nice that we can all help and support each other xxx

 

• Quarterly support events are held, bringing families together to share positive experiences. The quarterly events are different from the support group. They are an opportunity to have a time out in a safe environment with other families. We receive a huge amount of support within the organisation and the running of our events from our volunteers. These are often friends, family members and colleagues of the team who are eager to give something back to those who have suffered the heart breaking loss of a baby.

 

Our quarterly support events are funded through donations and from many other

sources including our League of Friends charity. We have various activities like yoga, facials, manicures (which even some of our Honeysuckle dads have tried) and crafts. Local support organisations and the Honeysuckle Bereavement Team are on hand throughout the events to offer support. To date we have held, Christmas Afternoon Tea in December 2015, Honeysuckle Spring Afternoon in March 2016 and Honeysuckle Teddy Bear Picnic in the Park in August 2016.  Four examples of comments follow:

 

• Thank you so much to the Honeysuckle team for a lovely afternoon. I was apprehensive and nervous, with lots of emotions and was very close to leaving because I felt I could not cope! However, you girls knew what to say and made me feel ‘normal’. I loved being able to make a personal keepsake for George along with being pampered whilst feeling comfortable and safe. I met some lovely Mummies too and it helps to know we are not alone. Thank you. Xxx

• Thank you so so much for this afternoon . After never feeling like I had anywhere to go I now feel like i belong somewhere . It meant so much to me just to know someone cared enough to talk to me . Hope to see you all again soon .????

• Thank you to Sarah, Marie, Pauline, Gill and all of the lovely ladies who gave up their time today to make us feel special including Aching Arms. A wonderful afternoon as always xxxx

• Thank you so much to the amazingHoneysuckle Bond team, Gill, Pauline, Sarah, Marie, once again use have shown how much us angel mummys mean to you, a bond of love has been shown once again, you truly are amazing and to each person who helped this event happen thank you, hope to see use all again soon xxx??

• An annual remembrance service is organised by the team. The service is held during International Baby Loss Awareness Week. The Team gained feedback from families who asked for the service to be held off the hospital site. The venue chosen for the service is Isla Gladstone Conservatory, Stanley Park, Anfield Road, Liverpool, L4 0TD. This years’ service will take place on Thursday 13^th October also at Isla Gladstone Conservatory from 6.30pm. There is a children’s creative activity area set up and ran by our colleagues from the Trust’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

 

The remembrance service is a very special, emotional and uplifting evening for our families and for all of the team. We have lots of input from our patient representatives on the organisation and planning of the service, from the choice of venue, design and printing of the order of service and the poems read out on the night. We make a short film, with some of our families being extremely brave and sharing their stories with all. We also have readings from some of our families and from some of our staff members. The team make special gifts for every family to take away with them and the service culminates in a balloon release.

 

• The Honeysuckle Bereavement Team is active on social media. There is a public page on Facebook (Honeysuckle Bond) where the team share thoughts, news articles, studies, poems and upcoming events.

 

• The team also have a closed group on Facebook; this is a private place where our families can talk to the team and others about what they are feeling.

 

• We also have a closed group for dads, as we are aware that support for dads is often limited and yet dads are grieving too.

  

Dianne Brown – Director of Nursing and Midwifery, Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust

I am delighted and extremely proud that the Honeysuckle team have been recognised for the excellent work with bereaved families through the very prestigious Butterfly Awards.

 

Over the last two years the team have worked tirelessly to build a service around the needs of families and babies, and at every step have worked with our families to ensure that the service we deliver is based on their feedback and what matters most to them. They have done this in such an inclusive and compassionate way, role modelling and leading the right behaviours and values across the Trust in how we care for women and families who have suffered such a devastating loss.

 

Their care includes all aspects of the bereavement and loss pathway, and provides comfort and assurance to parents that their babies are cared for safely, with dignity and respect and remembered exactly how they would wish.

 

Most striking for me is the feedback that we receive from our families, and is testament to the dedication commitment and hard work of the team. The work that they do, often in their own time  really  challenges  the taboo subject  of baby loss and provides  a platform for  discussions and experiences  to be heard, ensuring that every  woman and  family regardless of circumstances  feel that their loss matters and their babies count.

 

We are delighted and honoured to have been nominated for this award. The families that we meet are inspirational, brave and it is an honour to be part of their journey.

What others have said:

Sarah, Pauline, Marie & Gillian work tirelessly to support families who experience the loss of their precious baby/babies. They totally understand what families are going through and go above and beyond to ensure that they are supported in their grief journey. They organise briliiant & thoughtful support events where families can meet each other and feel that they are not on their own.