Maternity and neonatal care - Best Start five-year plan 2017–2024: report
This report provides insight into the key actions and achievements that have been delivered during the lifetime of the Best Start.
Timeline of Implementation
2015: Minister for Public Health announced the Strategic Review of Maternity and Neonatal Services in Scotland.
2015-2016: The Review group and subgroups are established and begin their work. Over 100 professionals, frontline staff, academics, third sector organisations, professional organisations and service users are involved.
2017: Chair appointed and Best Start Programme Board established.
2017: In January, ‘The Best Start: Five-Year Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Care’ is published.
2017: Five Health Boards are identified to pilot implementation of some Best Start recommendations on local delivery of care.
2017: Best Start lead established in each Health Board.
2017: Best Start Education included in SMMDP.
2018: The Neonatal Expenses Fund is established to help parents of premature and sick newborn babies to offset the cost of subsistence and travel to and from hospital.
2018: The Perinatal Subgroup begins an options appraisal process to identify the immediate and longer-term units that would make up the model of neonatal intensive care for Scotland.
2018: The Scottish Government and Healthcare Improvement Scotland publish ‘Learning from adverse events through reporting and review: A national framework for Scotland’.
2019: The National Discharge Planning Group publishes the National Neonatal Discharge Planning and Follow-Up Framework.
2019: Four test sites for the new model of neonatal intensive care are announced.
2019: The Maternity and Neonatal Data Hub for Scotland is established.
2019: The National Neonatal Network is established.
2020: The National Maternity Network is established.
2020: The ‘Continuity Of Carer And Local Delivery Of Care: Implementation Framework’ is published.
2021: The Midwifery Workforce and Education Review for Scotland was published by NHS Education for Scotland.
2021: The Young Patient Family Fund was launched and was merged with the Neonatal Expenses Fund to create a single unified fund.
2021: Operational guidance on the maternity and neonatal (perinatal) adverse event review process is published by the Scottish Government and Healthcare Improvement Scotland.
2022: The Scottish Perinatal Network Transport Group is established to implement nationally consistent best practices for the timely, safe, and effective transfer of pregnant women and their babies.
2023: The Midwifery Preceptorship Framework for Scotland is published, and five pathfinder boards begin to lead the roll-out of the framework.
2023: The Scottish Patient Safety Programme Caesarean Birth Change Package is published to support teams in understanding variation in Caesarean births across NHS Scotland, to inform improvement priorities.
2023: Guidelines on the management of headache and epilepsy in pregnancy are released by the Scottish Perinatal Network.
2023: The Perinatal Subgroup completes the options appraisal for the new model of neonatal intensive care.
2023: The ‘Neonatal care levels criteria: framework for practice’ is published by the Perinatal Subgroup.
2023: A national pathway and guidance for ‘In utero Transfers in Scotland: Consultant-Led Unit to Consultant-Led Unit’ is released by the Transport Group.
2023: The Transport Group publishes a national Pathway for the Transfer of Women from Community Maternity Units in an Extreme Obstetric Emergency.
2023: The Scottish Pregnancy, Births and Neonatal Data (SPBAND) Dashboard is released.
2024: The Real-Time staffing resource is launched by NHS Education for Scotland.