Highland mum travelled to Essex to give birth due to 'lack of local services'

EXCLUSIVE

A Bettyhill mum says she travelled more than 600 miles to have her babies in Essex, due to a lack of services in Caithness.

Lois Copsey feels it would've been a "very anxious time" if she'd chosen to stay at home and potentially go to Raigmore in Inverness on short notice.

She is one of several women we're speaking to this week, as we put the spotlight on women's health services in the far north of Scotland.

Lack of local services played "huge part" in having babies in Essex

After she decided to terminate her first pregnancy due to Omphalocele, a condition where the baby's organs are outside of the body, she was worried about potentially having to travel more than two and a half hours to Inverness.

Her partner is a crofter and as her due date fell in-between lambing season, she was worried about not having enough people around her in the far north.

Because of this, she returned to where her parents stay in Essex just before giving birth to her twins.

Lois explained why she made that move 18 months ago.

She said: "I just think it would’ve been a very anxious time if I’d chosen to remain in Bettyhill.

"Heavily pregnant with twins, I couldn’t even walk in January.

“Even going down for the scans it was actually hard work sitting in a car."

This will be the eighth winter since the maternity unit at Caithness General was downgraded from a consult-led to a midwife-led facility.

Lois told us how the lack of local facilities contributed to her decision.

She added: “I think it was the main reason and played a huge part.

“I think if I had all the necessary facilities on the doorstep I would’ve definitely gone with that.

“It was aggravation as well to go down the road, we had to think of a plan to get us back and all the rest of it."

An NHS Highland spokesperson said: "We are sorry to hear that people have had a poor experience of our services and that people have experienced distress.

We are always keen to hear from people and would welcome individuals contacting us directly in order to ensure we have a dialogue with them about what happened to them and what we could do differently in the future for them and others.

We attend the Caithness Health Action Team (CHAT) a group that represent women and families to raise issues, concerns and ideas.

"We meet regularly and implement service improvements - monitoring progress through the CHAT action plan.

"We also have regular meetings with the North Highland Women’s Wellbeing Hub (NHWWH), health leaders and local women meet to discuss and support taking women’s health services forward.

In Caithness we provide as many gynaecology procedures as is safe to do so in Caithness General Hospital.

"We have a consultant based in the area and regular visiting consultants from Inverness.

"High risk or complex cases continue to come to Raigmore – this is the same for all our remote and rural areas in the Highland region.

"Theatre lists are planned to support travel for those travelling longer distances and accommodation and expenses are also provided.

"We are currently looking at developing some specialist gynaecology nursing roles for Caithness to add resilience to the service.

"Our consultant lead for gynaecology is also running an endometriosis trial which will look at the care pathway for these patients.

These are just some of the service developments that we are working with and in discussion with the NHWWH group.

"We appreciate them to bring ideas, concerns and suggestions forward and as a team we work to achieve improvement."