"It didn't seem right", "I had a feeling things were going wrong" and "no-one was listening to my concerns" are some of the most common things I hear in the first meeting with my clients who are looking for advice after medical negligence. This is especially common in cases involving care during pregnancy, childbirth and care of babies and children. The mother or father instinctively know something's not right but their concerns go unheard or are not acted upon at the time. The theme continues afterwards when their gut feeling that they were let down by the system is ignored.

The parents of two babies who died after failures by the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust talked to the BBC about their ‘gnawing suspicion’, the care had been negligent and there were systemic failures at the Trust. Their instinct was right - even though the Trust's own investigation described the babies' deaths as a ‘no harm’ event. Eventually, failures were recognised by the Trust.

Next month, the report of the Ockenden review into the failures of maternity care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust will be published. It's been heralded as "one of the biggest scandals in the history of the NHS" but every single instance of negligent care is a scandal for the patient involved. Where the negligent care goes denied and the patient ignored, as was the case in Shropshire and many other parts of the country, the scandal is multiplied.

Sadly, this is not unique to Shropshire or other pockets across the country, we see it happen to our clients everywhere. There are of course areas of excellence and the care is wonderful on the vast majority of occasions but the failures do happen and patients are ignored.

We work with many patients and their families to give them a voice when they have been let down. For example, clients who sustained brain injuries during birth due to failures in maternity care in Dudley and Wolverhampton. We are also helping bereaved parents whose baby was cared for by the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, who are awaiting the Odkenden report with bated breath.

If your gut feeling is that something went wrong with the care you received during childbirth - in Shropshire or elsewhere in the country - please feel free to contact us for a confidential, no-pressure discussion about what we might be able to do to help.