Your vital support helps us towards our goal of making sure every mother, birthing person and baby gets the best care possible throughout pregnancy and those precious weeks afterwards.
Here are some of the things you helped us to achieve in 2024.
We have now sent nearly £4 million of equipment and aid to Ukraine since our Ukraine Appeal began in February 2022. Over £1.5 million was sent in 2024, including Baby Lifeline out-of-hospital birth bags, wound dressings, blood glucose monitors, fully equipped hospital beds, surgical and medical consumables, electric gynaecology couches, and ECG machines.
Healthcare professionals in Zaporizhzhia with equipment donated by Baby Lifeline
We have continued to work with the Mothers’ Union this year: since 2022 they have kindly donated nearly 200 bags containing essentials for new mums for us to send to Ukraine. Thirteen bags are waiting in our office to go on the next shipment.
Our amazing supporters raised £14,000 by running the London Marathon in April! Thank you and a huge well done to Katrina, Will, Alexander, Jordan, Sarah and Amy. Learn about our runners, and what running the London Marathon for Baby Lifeline involves here.
We welcomed nearly 400 people to Birmingham for our Fifth Annual National Maternity Safety Conference on 26th September.
We invited speakers working on all aspects of maternity safety to discuss the theme Challenge. Empower. Improve at our National Maternity Safety Conference in Birmingham this year including Professor Lucy Easthope and Rob Behrens CBE. We were pleased to be able to bring international perspectives to the programme as Charlotte Elvander spoke about the Swedish maternity system, and Viktoriya Luchka, Alina Dunayevska and Larysa Cheprasova shared lessons from Ukraine.
Next year’s event will take place on 25th September 2025 – save the date!
We discussed the theme Challenge. Empower. Improve at our National Maternity Safety Conference in 2024
2,500 healthcare professionals have attended our training to improve the care and safety of mothers and babies. Over 68 courses, that’s more than 100 days of learning!
The team travelled across the UK and beyond, with courses taking place in-person as far afield as Dublin, Newcastle, Glasgow, Kent, Norwich and Cumbria. On online courses, delegates not only joined us from all four devolved nations, but we welcomed delegates from abroad!
We also improved our online learning and developed five new/improved courses this year: Implementing Saving Babies’ Lives: Preterm Matters, CTG Masterclass: Train the Leaders, Preparing, Protecting and Repairing the Perineum, Informed Consent in Maternity Services: Putting it into Practice, and Governance, Assurance and Improving Quality and Safety in Your Neonatal Services: Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnerships (MNVPs).
A huge thank you to our training team and all faculty for their hard work.
Some of our amazing Examination of the Newborn faculty
An action shot from the CTG Train the Leaders course
Teaching paramedics on the Childbirth Emergencies in the Community course
Along with 12 other charities, we gave evidence to the Covid-19 inquiry in October, and also contributed to many other national initiatives and research projects to improve care for mothers and babies.
We submitted evidence to Lord Darzi’s Independent Investigation of the National Health Service (NHS) in England, and our Head of Research and Development, Sara Ledger, contributed to BBC Panorama’s Midwives Under Pressure documentary back in January.
Baby Lifeline supported ground-breaking conferences, including The Motherhood Group’s Black Maternity Health Conference and Irwin Mitchell’s first South Asian Maternal Health Conference, and the College of Paramedics’ first Pre-Hospital Maternity and Newborn Birth Conference.
We have also contributed to various research projects as stakeholders, steering group or PPIE members, such as the Maternity Investigations and Review Tools process evaluation (MATREP) research study, The Birth Experience Study (BESt), Sono-Breech, DREaMED and CONNECT. We are also part of the Maternity and Neonatal Programme Stakeholder Council.
What’s next for Baby Lifeline?
Our 2025 diary is already filling up! We are proud to present our Bags of Laughter comedy event with Adam Kay, taking place at the Warwick Arts Centre in February 2025. Tickets are available now.
Our 2025 UK Maternity Unit Marvels (MUM) Awards are back in 2025! The UK MUM Awards is an opportunity to showcase stories of exceptional maternity and neonatal care in the UK. Nominations are now closed, and we are look forward to sharing the winners with you in March.
This Christmas, we invite you to join our 2024 Christmas Appeal and help us make a real difference for mothers, babies, and families across the UK. Find out more about why your support matters, how you can get involved, and the impact of your generosity here. You can also support us by donating to Baby Lifeline instead of sending Christmas cards with dontsendmeacard.com.
Finally, thank you for all your support this year. We wish you season’s greetings, and look forward to doing it all again in 2025!