Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme

Led by NHS England, the National Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme’s (MatNeoSIP) mission is to create and embed the conditions for all staff to improve the safety and outcomes of maternal and neonatal care by reducing unwarranted variation and provide a high-quality healthcare experience for all women, babies and families across England.

Read more about the National MatNeo SIP.

The MatNeoSIP aims to reduce the rates of maternal and neonatal deaths, stillbirths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth by 50% by 2025 and to reduce the national rate of preterm births from 8% to 6% by 2025.

Project overview

The Health Innovation Network is working in partnership with our regional Trusts, Local Maternity and Neonatal Systems (LMNS), Public Health leads as well as commissioners and women and their families to support the MatNeoSIP.

National ambitions listed below:

  • Support the spread and adoption of the preterm perinatal optimisation care pathway across England by 95% or greater by March 2025.
  • Support the development of a national pathway approach for the effective management of maternal and neonatal deterioration using the Prevent Identify Escalate Respond (PIER) framework across all settings by March 2025.
  • Work with key stakeholders to support the development of a national Maternal Early Warning Score (MEWS) by March 2021 and spread to all providers by March 2025.
  • Support the spread and adoption of the Neonatal Early Warning Trigger and Track score (NEWTT) to all maternity and neonatal services by March 2025.
  • Reduce perinatal health inequalities. Find out more about the work we do to support this.

We will support these objectives locally by focusing on optimisation and stabilisation of the preterm infant through:

  • Birth in the right place
  • Antenatal administration of magnesium sulphate
  • Antenatal corticosteroids
  • Intravenous antibiotics
  • Delayed cord clamping
  • Thermoregulation
  • Early breast milk
  • Neonatal caffeine administration
  • Neonatal volume targeted ventilation
  • Early recognition and management of deterioration of women and babies through:
    • Testing MEWS at a system level
    • Examining the current MatNeo Prevent, Identify, Escalate and Respond (PIER) pathway
    • Supporting the adoption and spread of the neonatal early warning ‘trigger and track’ score (NEWTT).

Our national ambitions are listed below:

  • We are currently awaiting the MatNeoSIP commission specification from NHSE for financial year 2024/25. We will be carefully planning how best to continue supporting our stakeholders with perinatal optimisation and deterioration workstreams for the next year and will update this page as soon as possible. Please click here to see the support we’ve provided to south London maternity and neonatal units over the last two years with their perinatal optimisation quality improvements.

We're here to help

If you have any questions or would like more information about MatNeo and the local learning system, please contact Hebe Davies-Colley, MatNeoSIP Lead and Project Manager in the Patient Safety and Experience Team.

Get in touch

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