Harrogate District Hospital is set to review its staff policies after the NHS announced plans to give paid leave for miscarriages.

This month, officials at NHS England revealed proposals to offer 10 days paid leave to staff who miscarry in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The move comes as part of the organisation’s new pregnancy and baby loss policy.

Angela Wilkinson, director of people and culture at Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, said it already offered support to staff, including paid leave, in the event of losing a baby.

However, she added that the trust would review its policies in light of NHS England’s new guidelines to see what further support it could offer.

She said:

“The health and wellbeing of our colleagues is extremely important to us at HDFT. A miscarriage is a traumatic experience and any colleague who sadly loses a child is treated with care and compassion, and offered the support they need at such a difficult time.

“It is important that we give someone who experiences a miscarriage time to grieve and process what has happened. The policies we have in place at HDFT currently do provide specific support and paid time off in the event of baby loss. 

“We will review NHS England’s new pregnancy and baby loss policy to assess how we can further strengthen the support we currently offer those colleagues who sadly experience such a tragedy.”

The move to roll out the policy by NHS England comes after it was first introduced by Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust in May 2023.

The trust, which provides health services in Hull and East Yorkshire, said it implemented the policy as a “compassionate move” for its staff.

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Knaresborough mum-of-three and musician Clare-Lucy Pascall is releasing an album of songs about the trauma of miscarriage.

Baby Loss Awareness Week, which is taking place for the 19th year, aims to offer families who have suffered pregnancy and baby loss a supportive space to share their experiences and feel they are not alone.

Ms Pascall, who suffered a miscarriage in 2018, said writing music has helped her come to terms with her experience.

“It sounds terrible, but I call it creation from devastation. That’s where it comes from. When you’ve gone through trauma, creating something worked so well so I could come to terms with it.”

‘An awful moment’

In 2018, Ms Pascall went for her 12-week scan, which she said had “always been the fun part” of pregnancy as it had been the first time she and her husband Harry could see and hear their new child.

But the couple were dealt the devastating news that the baby had no heartbeat.

She said:

“It was a weird, awful and a nothing moment. I could see her. That was the hard part. She still looked like a baby.”

Ms Pascall then had to go through months of uncomfortable hospital procedures.

“My body didn’t play ball. I spent April to July going to hospital visits, having scans and doing things you don’t want to do when you know you’re not having a baby.”

A naturally outgoing and gregarious person, Ms Pascall said she was “physically speechless” and unable to speak to anyone about what she’d been through.

“I didn’t give myself a chance to grieve the loss. I locked it away and put it on the backburner. I couldn’t cope with it.”

“At the same time I was doing everything i normally do, and not telling anybody.”

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Ms Pascall said her husband Harry was “her rock” throughout the period but it took a year before she was ready to go to a counsellor to help her through the emotional trauma.

To remember her daughter, she takes flowers to Stonefall Cemetery, which is where babies that have miscarried are cremated.

“Remembering sounds like such a random thing when you didn’t get through a pregnancy. But I could see the scan, she was there, I knew she existed.”

Debut album

Ms Pascall’s debut album, which is called “Dear Friend, Who Am I?” will be released on Amazon, iTunes and Spotify.

She said:

“In my music and my songs, she comes out in them all the time. It feels like an imagined memory, what it would have been.”

Ms Pascall will hold an album launch party at Fashion House Bistro on November 8th — the date that would have been her daughter’s third birthday.

“The 8th was her due date, so it’s quite a big thing.

“It’s awareness and acknowledgement [about miscarriage] but also about the creativity that has risen from that devastating loss.”

Listen to her album here.