Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee 26 November 2025
That is helpful.
Although there is a pattern to them, a lot of our questions cut across one another and are relevant to various points. Obviously, we are going to discuss why we went from having eight units to having just three, following a recommended reduction to between three and five. However, following our visit to Wishaw, my question is: how does the framework aim to maximise the experience of babies and parents—that is, the human aspect—alongside maximising clinical outcomes and cost-effectiveness?
The unit in Wishaw is an award-winning facility with highly experienced staff and is at a geographical point that is accessible for everybody in the south of Scotland. We know that some of the larger units that exist are turning people away because they do not have capacity, which raises the prospect that somebody from Lanarkshire could end up in Aberdeen.
In Wishaw, we spoke to a father who said that, following the birth of their child, his wife was left in a life-threatening situation and that, if the unit in Wishaw had not existed, he would have had to decide whether to stay with his wife, whose life was at risk, or stay with his baby, who might have been in Aberdeen. That would have been an awful choice to make. The human dynamic in such circumstances seems to be at risk.
As I said, there is an award-winning facility in Wishaw and, when we visited it, we saw that the quality of care that is provided is outstanding. To us, as laypeople, it seemed difficult to square the circle.