Past Events
Scottish Network Day May 2009
The event started after a general introduction with a talk by Sue Hale from National Sands about National and the Why 17 Campaign. She talked about many of the issues that are being pressed forward by national and gave some statistics that some of you may be familiar with, like stillbirth and neonatal deaths are twice as common as road deaths, it is equivalent to 16 jumbo jets crashing and being wiped out every year .... yet there is little publicity on this and how national are looking to improve on the care given in the maternity hospitals. There have been visits to parliament to present papers and a visit to the Scottish Executive is planned for November, and there was talk about lobbying MPs and the Health Minister for changes. For more details on this please see this page: - http://www.why17.org/Get-Involved.html.
After Sue's talk we had a very moving Father's Testimony from George Hunter from Forth Valley Sands about his experiences.
We then had an enlightening talk from the Registration Office in Glasgow, outlining things they have to do and things that they have tried to improve upon. For me, the message I took home was that they have developed a really simple coloured card system so that they know as soon as anyone from the local maternity hospital in coming in to register a still birth or neo-natal birth and death is handled with dignity and given some privacy. For more information about there services please visit this website http://gro-scotland.gov.uk/.
Next was a play about the new group based in Forth Valley, about the difficulties they have had and also their victories. They are still a new group with only a few resources but the are growing and are getting stronger everyday. Then a talk from the recently set up group based in Dumfries and Galloway, which is a very small group that is growing and whom are extremely positive.
After a full morning we grabbed a bite to eat and socialise then back into the main hall.
There were about a hundred people present representing Scottish Sands groups and we were split off into 4 different group to perform workshops, Jo-Anna went to the supporting siblings workshop and I went to the next pregnancy workshops these were pre-assigned before we got there). The other workshops were Supporting Dads and Guidelines for Professionals. The next pregnancy workshop that I attended gave me thoughts about our how other groups deal with next pregnancy groups and we gave our experiences and wishlists which were compiled and used in a feedback for all session which concluded the day.
Debbie