More than 3,500 healthcare professionals in the maternity sector are being given the opportunity to receive proficient training from Baby Lifeline, a national charity which helps pregnant women and new-born babies.

The expert training aims to enhance the professional development of doctors, midwives, nurses, and looks at different ways to promote safety through best clinical practice and communication to ensure the healthiest possible outcome from pregnancy and birth.

The announcement comes in response to the NHS Litigation Authority, "Ten Years of Maternity Claims" report, which found that legal action from maternity negligence represented the highest value and second highest number of clinical negligence claims in the UK.

Linda Millband, a clinical negligence solicitor at Thompsons Solicitors comments, “It’s hardly surprising that clinical negligence at birth leads to high value claims as the babies injured have their whole lives ahead of them. We know what a fantastic job obstetric services do, especially midwives, day in and day out but occasionally things do go wrong and at Thompsons we’ve dealt with cases that are a direct result of poor obstetric care. Anything that increases training and reduces risk must be a good thing.

“The safety of unborn babies and their mothers is always the utmost priority and developing medical professionals’ skills will hopefully provide significant benefits to the both the maternity sector and mothers-to-be across the UK.”