Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Ratings - Perinatal services

• Overall

  Good

• Safe

  Good

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Outstanding

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Good

Our view of the service

Date of assessment: 8 July 2025.

Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust specialist perinatal services consist of an 8-bedded inpatient unit and a community service.

The Margaret Oates Mother and Baby Unit is an 8-bed specialist inpatient perinatal unit based at Hopewood Hospital and is for mothers from 32 weeks of pregnancy and their babies up to one year after birth. They are a regional unit for the East Midlands, however, as a national resource they accept admissions from other areas of England if needed.

Community Perinatal services cover the whole of Nottinghamshire, the base is located at Hopewood Hospital, however the team see patients across the county in a variety of locations including in the patient’s home, GP practices. We have completed 3 assessments at this location using our new approach and therefore its overall rating is using the new methodology. The service’s overall rating was Good. This was an unannounced assessment, which means the provider was not told an assessment was going to be starting beforehand. During this assessment we looked at all quality statements across the key question Responsive and Well led and some of the quality statements across the key question Effective. As we assessed all the quality statements for the key question of Responsive and Well led, the rating for these key questions reflects the findings of this assessment. However, as we did not assess quality statements from the key questions; Safe, Effective and Caring, which means we use the ratings from the previous inspection to rate these key questions. At the time of the assessment the service was supporting 8 mothers and their babies on the unit and 5 of whom were on leave from the ward.

People's experience of this service

We spoke with 2 patients, who were present on the ward, attended 1 multi-disciplinary team ward round meeting, reviewed 7 completed patient feedback questionnaires, and looked at 4 patient care and treatment records. Both patients we spoke with were positive about the support they were provided with and felt involved in their care and treatment. They understood their treatment and felt they could speak to the staff openly. Patient feedback surveys showed patients felt welcomed on the ward, staff were kind and welcoming and patients were involved in decisions about their care.

We saw patients were involved in their care and treatment through ward rounds and set weekly goals with staff. Care was person centered and considered cultural needs.