At Sands we’re determined that every family has the best opportunity to see their baby grow up. We believe that together, with your support, we can save more babies’ lives. 

Sands has been fighting for safer maternity care and better support for bereaved families for decades. We do this by putting the voices of parents at the heart of all we do.  

Janet Scott and Charlotte Bevan are Joint Heads of the Saving Babies' Lives team at Sands. We asked them about the part Sands has played in understanding why some babies die and the impact of our work to reduce these deaths.

Janet started out in Sands helping parents access information about the medical cause of their baby's death but the more she found out about how many baby deaths could potentially be avoided, the more she felt Sands had a vital part to play to highlight this relatively ignored tragedy and work to prevent so many deaths happening.   

Charlotte came to Sands with a background in journalism. Her first daughter Hope died shortly after she was born due to things going wrong during her labour that might have been avoided with better care. When she first joined Sands the charity was not yet involved in research and there was no strategy for making maternity care safer. She wanted to take parents' stories and use their experiences and observations about what needed to change, to push for safer, more personalised care where parents voices were at the centre.