Donna Ockenden, midwife

0:00BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:42My castaway this week is the midwife Donna Ockenden. She has dedicated most of her working life to taking care of mothers and babies. For many years, she did it on the wards, more recently by leading the investigation into what became at the time the biggest maternity scandal in NHS history. Initially, she was asked to look into 23 cases. That soon became over 1 ,000. Her landmark report, the Ockenden Review, was published in 2022. It revealed a shocking, decades-long legacy of failings at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, a toxic mix of poor practice and working culture, which contributed to the deaths of more than 200 babies and nine mothers.

1:23She's currently leading her next inquiry into maternity services at Nottingham University Hospital's NHS Trust which will be published next year It's already the largest investigation into a single NHS service hearing evidence from over 2 ,000 families so far Her own story is one of resilience as well as care She's a survivor of sexual abuse who experienced homelessness as a teenager while she was in sole charge of her three siblings Training as a midwife helped her build a better life. Her promise to improve maternity care was made not long after she qualified to a baby she still thinks about every day.

2:03She says, I had a little chat with a baby who had died and I said, Gina, no matter how long or short my career is in midwifery, every day I'm going to try and do something to make maternity care safer. I call it my Gina promise. I've tried really, really hard to keep my Gina promise every day. That is what's driven me. Donna Ockenden, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. Donna, we'll talk more about Gina later, but I do want to start with how you cope in moments like that. It was one of so many incredibly tough days in your career. How do you keep your own feelings in check when you're supporting families through the worst day of their lives?

2:44there were times in shrewsbury when i would make these visits to shrewsbury on my own and i would go back to my hotel bedroom and cry however i suppose since then i've learned that when i do those family visits although i might be in the room with the family on my own i always now have a member of my team with me so at the end of the day there is someone else to talk to other than the four walls in a hotel room. And then I think it is about honouring the families and honouring the babies or sometimes the mothers who are not with them and realising that I am there for them, not them there for me.

3:30As a young midwife, I learnt a lot from hospital chaplains and one particular hospital chaplain in Portsmouth spoke to me as I started my career as a bereavement midwife and he said to me you know you have to learn you cannot carry everyone's suitcase of grief around with you because if you do that don you're going to be weighed down by that suitcase it is important to say right at the beginning that most women who give birth will have a positive experience yes but your latest investigation in nottingham has already been in the press and the shockwaves from the occenden report were huge it dominated the news when it was published How did you feel the night before it was released?

4:09I just thought I have given this my all. My team have given this their all. Many of the parents came to the launch and were with me when we watched Sajid Javid make the announcement about accepting all of the findings. And there was a huge cheer in the room when he did that. So I hope that those parents and those families feel that it was a job well done. we're also here to listen to your music choices today Donna tell us a little bit about your first disc why have you chosen it so we've only just begun by the carpenters it represents the love that my parents had for each other at that time so dad has gone away to Das Island in the Middle East and offshore island thousands of miles away and there was a program on the BBC I believe it It was called Family Favorites.

5:01And Mammy would write to the BBC in London, asking the BBC to play a dedication, this song for Daddy. And Daddy would write from Das Island, asking them to play this song for Mammy and myself and my siblings. And Mum would be cooking Sunday lunch. It was always played on a Sunday. And we'd all, as children, sit around what we called the radiogram, a big wooden box thing. and we'd listen to see if Daddy's dedication would be played. And, of course, it wasn't every week, but it was on several occasions over those years and the BBC played from Clayton Thomas in Das Island or Patricia Thomas in Aberam and Aberdeer for her husband, Clayton, who's now in the Middle East.

5:46And so I remember that very clearly as a little girl. It's a very important song. We've only just begun to live White lace and promises A kiss for luck and we're on our way We've only begun Before the rising sun We fly The Carpenters and We've Only Just Begun. So Donna Rockington, you were born in Aberdeer, South Wales, in 1966 and grew up in the nearby village of Aberamon. Your dad, Clayton, loved his home country. Apparently he would always toot his horn when he was crossing the border home. Tell me a little bit more about him. What kind of person was he? My dad was a carpenter by trade. He wasn't formally educated, really.

6:45He left school at 15. He wanted to be the best dad and provider he could. He worked long hours. So your mum and dad were young when they had you. You born the eldest of four. And like you say, your dad had left school and was working as a carpenter. Money must have been very tight. Yeah, money was very tight. I think when we talk about poverty in 1970 South Wales, it was real grinding poverty. my dad worked six days a week on a building site you know he had one pair of work trousers and I clearly remember we didn't have central heating and I clearly remember that if he came home with his work trousers wet and dirty that was what he had to wear the next day there was no way of drying them there was no way of washing them he could only wash them in a we had a twin tub washing machine on a Sunday morning and what what about your your mum you know she mustn't have had much to look after you with for herself for her own needs absolutely so I remember mam having one pair of shoes they had holes in she stuffed them with paper to try and keep them dry and I will just say it she had one pair of knickers that she used to wash out in the kitchen sink at night to try and keep some decency about her we were very very poor so you said your dad was absolutely determined that you would have the best that he could possibly provide was he able to shield you from how difficult things were?

8:08Yes, to a degree. Basically, we never went without. I wasn't aware at the time that my parents got themselves into a huge amount of debt. So for years, I thought I had an auntie called Auntie Evelyn. But Auntie Evelyn was actually a debt collector and she would come round all times of the day and night knocking on the door. I remember my mum had a beige card and Auntie Evelyn would fill in how much money she'd given and how much money my mum had then paid back on daddy's payday. I think that it took me until I became an adult to realise the sacrifices that my parents had made for me. The way that my dad worked has also instilled in me a real work ethic to be the best you can.

8:54So, you know, I have two lovely daughters, Katie and Phoebe. They would tell you if you asked them that mum's phrase is be the best you can. Your dad ended up leaving Wales, as you mentioned. He was working for a construction company in the Persian Gulf at one point. How often did he come home around that time? He did six months on Das Island and two weeks at home. And my mum was left to look after four little children. I think I would have been seven, so I was the oldest, and my little sister was a baby. What kind of effect did that have on the family? My mum ploughed on in the best way that she could.

9:34So my mum and dad wrote to each other every day and I wrote very regularly. Daddy would leave me money and in those days it was flimsy blue airmail paper. And yeah, once a month he would phone home to a neighbour's house and we would all have to run up the street to take the phone call. So it was great excitement. It's time for your second choice of music today if you wouldn't mind Donna what's it going to be bye bye baby by the Bay City Rollers because as a little girl the BCR as they were known the Bay City Rollers and all of the girls in my school in Blangwa Primary School were absolutely mad on them and there was a day when we were all going to wear either Bay City Roller t-shirts or tartan scarves they were Scottish boy band and I asked my my mam mam I need a t-shirt and she was like oh we'll see what we can do you know see I you know I'll do my best.

10:25And I woke up that morning and my mum had hand stitched a pair of tartan edged trousers for me in Les McEwan. He was the lead singer, Les McEwan, white tartan. And I went into school that day. I was the only girl with Les McEwan trousers and I just felt like a supermodel.

10:54Bye bye baby, don't make me cry. Bye baby, baby, bye bye. You're the one girl in town I'd marry. Girl I'd marry you now. If I were free, I wish it could be. The Bay City Rollers and Bye Bye Baby. So Donna Rockington, your mum Pat was a very complicated person. You've described her as troubled. Where did her problems stem from? Unfortunately, from the very earliest age until she married my dad, she endured a life of tyranny and depravity at the hands of her father and her mother. And the trauma that she experienced, I think it's true to say, stayed with her until the day she died in 2021. Was it physical abuse?

11:51Was it sexual abuse? Everything. Yeah. What did you know about that when you were growing up? I didn't know until I was 18. So mum did tell me. Interestingly, though, we never spoke about it again. It was almost as though she had told me and then it was never discussed. Mum was on constant painkillers, pain relief of the strongest, strongest kind. She carried her medication around in a supermarket carrier bag. Pain relief, I mean... Psychological pain. Okay. But she saw herself as having lots of physical ailments. Okay. And she would take pain relief in the middle of the night. She would take pain relief in the middle of the day.

12:35She would take pain relief to sleep. She would take other tablets to wake up, all of which must have affected her behaviour. So what do you remember about how she behaved and when did you realise that that wasn't, it wasn't normal? She couldn't tolerate close physical contact. If we fell over, she would pick us up. There we are then, brush us down. You know, never, if we cried, she never put an arm around us. She wasn't able to do it. Secondly, she was frightened of the dark. So she never went to bed at night. She would sit up and hence the stitching of the Bay City roller trousers. So she'd do that overnight?

13:11She'd do that overnight. She made action man clothes for my brother's action man and Cindy clothes. And we didn't link that behaviour to the abuse that she'd suffered until much later in life. And it took her dying, passing away for all of us to actually sit down and realise that all of these things were linked. It's interesting, that idea of her sitting up, stitching those trousers for you to go to school and feel great in, but not being able to put her arm around you. I mean, there's something in her there that's wanting to show her love. But was that her only way of expressing it? Would she be able to say it?

13:45What was her emotional engagement with you and her behaviour like? No, she never said it. She never said it. And it was about what could she do, bearing in mind, you know, we were living in poverty. So she couldn't go out and buy us riches and gold. So it was what tasks could she do to show us that she loved us? And for me also, she taught me to read. she was very very keen that I should learn to read and every Friday so that she could go with the others um you know push the pram up to Aberdeer to go and do the weekly shop and push the pram back I had to stay for school dinners but I was quite a good negotiator because the only way I would stay for school dinners was be if mammy brought me a ladybird book you know she would choose the ladybird book every Friday different one and then sit with me and read so she would give of her time but she couldn't give affection.

14:36And what effect did all of this have on you, do you think? Did you become a kind of second mum, as many kids in that situation often do? Yes, I did. And even now, so I'm 58, I'm the oldest, and my siblings are all younger than me, there is still a tendency in our family to say, well, let's ask Don. What does Donna think? And we are really close. We're in touch every day. Despite everything that we went through as children, we remain really, really close and together. And during that time, you did have your paternal grandmother, Beryl. I know she was a very important person to you. What did she provide?

15:09So Nanny Beryl was proper and solid and she wore outdoor clothes and indoor clothes, outdoor shoes and indoor shoes. So life at home would often have been chaotic and dirty. And Nanny Beryl gave us structure. She would cook for us and she would insist that we sat at the table. The table would be laid. And she gave us time. We spent a lot of time at her house. and she was a role model of correctness and properness. But at the same time, she was also very affectionate. She had a rocking chair in her house and we would queue up, the four of us, to sit on the rocking chair with Nanny. So, you know, yeah, she was very, very important to us.

15:58Donna, it's time for your next disc, your third choice today. So we're going to hear Ukulele Lady, sang by Ethel Merman. this was a song that Nanny Beryl would sing when she was applying her lipstick to go down to town to go down to Aberdeer so she never went out of the house without make-up she used to wear red lipstick and sing and hum along to this If you like a ukulele lady Ukulele lady like a you If you like to linger where it's shady Ukulele lady linger too If you kiss a ukulele lady While you promise ever to be true And she sings Ukulele lady, Ethel Merman. Donna Rockington, as you've said, your father got a job in Abu Dhabi when you were nine and the family moved out to the city.

16:59What do you remember about life there? It was a huge cultural change to move from Aberamon, a little village in South Wales, to Abu Dhabi. I mean, we'd never even been to an airport before as children. My fondest memories of Abu Dhabi were that every evening, because my mum got a job working night shifts in a hospital called the Cornish Hospital, Daddy would say to us, souk or beach? and my brother would always say beach because there were speed boats down on this particular beach called Batin Beach and I would always say souk and I was absolutely fascinated by the local ladies they wore full-face burqas black abayas and then very brightly coloured dresses that remained one of my fondest memories you know going to the souk with daddy so your dad got a job in Iran but then the revolution there meant that you all came back to Wales he then went off to work again and he was in Africa, a few different African countries I think.

17:58Absolutely. Yeah what happened to everyone else? So we stayed at home with mum in South Wales by this time obviously my parents were comfortably off and my dad had built a house a large white house in a place called Kumbach so a couple of miles away from Aberdeer. Unfortunately my mother wrote to him when he was in Africa to say she had met someone else he was not to come home that if he did come home. He was to move in to Nanny Beryl's spare room, which he did. So in, it would have been 1979, Daddy lost everything. He lost his home, he lost his children, he lost his wife, and he moved back in with his mother.

18:41And where were you? We were at home in Kumbach. My mother married again very quickly, deeply unpleasant character. and shortly there afterwards my sister was born who we remained very close to. Was this when you were at boarding school? So I was briefly at boarding school. That was something that my dad very much wanted me to do and then one day out of the blue my mother came and collected me and took me back to Wales. No warning, I had no idea. I remember being in a science class and the head teacher came in and said Donna Thomas your mother's here to collect you and I didn't know. And was that fairly typical of your mum that kind of erratic behaviour?

19:27Yeah and your parents ended up in court fighting over where you should live how much did you know about that battle between them? We knew some of it however at the time I had decided I wanted to do law and my mum said to me one day oh don't go to school today you got an opportunity to go and look around a court if you want to and I thought great so I'm taken by my mother and the person I later realised was her solicitor around the back of this court in Merthyr Tidville I think in South Wales and I'm sat down and they open a curtain and I'm actually in a witness box I'm in a witness box and my dad and his then partner how old were you done her?

20:11I would have been in first year of O level so I would have been maybe 14, 15, 14 and there's a judge there I presume it was a judge he didn't introduce himself and he said your mother wants to take you to Ireland and you and your brother and your sisters what do you want to do? I said I don't know I just want everyone to be happy and then my father started shouting in the court don't take my children away don't take my children away crying and shouting and in the end I remember saying oh well I suppose I do then and the judge said to my mother you can take the children to Ireland. Some months went by and nothing happened and then we were told we were going to Ireland for a weekend so we packed the car, this was with her second husband, we packed the car with a few possessions.

21:03I did see my mother flush our goldfish down the drain. We left the cats behind because we were only going for a weekend and when we got there she had moved us to Ireland and changed our school she changed our name as well so we were stepfather's name yes so we were it was first day at school and I remember sister Eater the nuns calling out Donna Williams Donna Williams Donna Williams she was calling the register and I didn't answer because I didn't know who Donna Williams was. And I remember thinking, but I'm Donna Thomas. My name is Donna Thomas. Donna, let's take a break for some music. It's your fourth choice today.

21:48Tell us what we're going to hear next and why you're taking it to the island with you. We're going to hear Isn't It Amazing by The Hothouse Flowers. It links my two or three occasions when I lived in the Middle East. I lived as a child and as an adult opposite sit a mosque, I would hear, as a child, I heard morning prayers, Fajr, and I didn't know what this beautiful sound was. And this song talks about, and our prayers will be heard to fill the air. And whenever I hear this song, I'm back in Abu Dhabi, which is a place I love.

22:33And every source of prayer And our prayers must be heard Fill the air, every cry is a song Every cry is a song Isn't it amazing? Hot House Flowers. Donna Rockington, you were obviously a bright girl and you came back to England alone to study for your A-levels. Your mother, though, insisted that you lived with her father. It's difficult to comprehend that she would send you back to the man who'd abused her so appallingly. What happened? I moved in with my grandfather and his second wife. I hardly knew them. We'd hardly seen them throughout our childhood. And for a couple of months, I didn't know that I was being spied on.

23:26You know, the lock on my bedroom door was broken. the lock on the bathroom door got broken I would try to go to the toilet and the door would be pushed open and then it progressed to hands up my skirt finding him in my room at night I couldn't do the most basic thing I couldn't have a bath for two years that sounds ridiculous but it's true because if I was to run a bath and get in a bath he would be in the bathroom I couldn't go to the toilet properly. So if I wanted to go to the toilet, it had to be a public toilet or toilet at school. I lived in fear for the whole two years of my A-levels. Was there anyone you could ask for help?

24:07Anyone you could talk to? I think, first of all, in terms of school, I would have gone from, I know I did go from someone who was quite a bright student, who was expected to do very well, to coasting along the bottom of the A-level class. and my A-level results were really poor in the end. But no one inquired, no one was curious, no one asked why. And on a number of occasions, I had no money because my mother sent me with no pocket money. I walked miles across Bristol to my mother's family and said, I got something important to tell you. And I think I can remember doing that three times and they just put me in a car and took me back.

24:46So I was all on my own. Were you able to talk to anybody else, friends? Were you able to get in touch with your dad? For some reason, I didn't contact my dad and Nanny Beryl. I told my dad many, many, many years later. Why do you think that was? Well, the first thing was my grandfather blocked the phone so I couldn't make external calls. And I was just totally alone. When everybody moved over, I mean, how did you feel about that? Because you had this role as second mother figure to your siblings. You must have been scared for them. How did you cope? Well, I tried to prevent it. So it got so bad that I decided I was going to somehow I was going to try and tell my mother.

25:28And I had to get through to the operator. And I told the operator what was happening. And she wanted to call the police. And I said, no, I just need to speak to my mum. And she said, OK, I'm going to put you through. But if you don't get help, you must come back to us. So I spoke to my mum and I told her what was happening. and I said to her, you know, I'm coming back to Ireland or I'm going to Wales. No, she said, it hasn't worked out in Ireland. He's left me. I'm going to do a moonlit flit. We're coming back to live, isn't it? We called him grandpa, with grandpa in Bristol. And I said, you can't.

26:03You can't do it. It's not safe. It's not safe. She said, we'll be with you by the end of the week. And so then there had to be a watchfulness. I told my sisters and we had to try and keep, We tried to keep an eye on one another the whole time. We tried, but couldn't always achieve it, to always have at least two of us in the house at any one time. So like a rotor? Almost like, yeah, a protection rotor. But that wasn't always achievable. And I think it was only maybe six or eight weeks. It was a short period of time. He beat my brother and that was it. We won't have in any of that. Myself and my sisters just verbally attacked him for it.

26:49And he just threw us out on the street. Literally, he threw us out on the street with our possessions. You ended up living in a homeless shelter, the whole family, and you spent quite some time there. How long and what was life like? There were no cooking facilities. There were no laundry facilities. We used to hang our milk outside in a carrier bag outside the window. So in winter, they were frozen blocks. In summer, it curdled. cooking was illegal was not allowed and if you were caught cooking you were thrown out so when we did cook on a little primus gas stove on electric one ring cooker mum used to block the doors with towels and we became aware I became aware first but we became aware that let's call them our neighbours within the homeless shelter they were not necessarily safe to be around children.

27:39And so again, that watchfulness, the five of us, the watchfulness around the plywood corridors, as we called them, was very, very evident. We all looked out for one another. Were you angry with your mother for all that she put you through? I was more resigned, I think. One of the features of our relationship was, no matter the controlling and the behaviour until we finally became estranged from her many, many years later, we tolerated it and I can't really explain why that was. Donna, I want to find out what happened to you in a moment but first, I'd love to hear your fifth music choice today.

28:19What's your next disc? My next disc is a song called If Only by Hazel O 'Connor and it comes from the film Breaking Glass where Kate, the heroine of the film is dependent on drugs and she's now in rehabilitation. It's the final song in the film and she sings, I'll stand up again and I'll run and I'll jump up till I touch the sun. I won't be the one to be bowed by the sound of If Only. And we used to play this on the record player in Neville House. We had a little record player and it was a song that somehow resonated with me and it kept me going. I'll stand up again and I'll run and I did What do you do when they turn on the light You guard your heart so they steal your sight You reach out of blindness, touch the alone Its icicle fingers chill you to the bone

29:22What do you do when the cat gets your tongue No way to tell, it's all going wrong Hazel O 'Connor, if only. Donna Ockenden, during this period of constant upheaval, you somehow managed to complete your nursing and midwifery training in Wales and then later Portsmouth. Can you remember the first baby you saw being born? I can remember the first baby I saw being born. It was at Neith General Hospital, a little girl. I was so excited about seeing this new baby arrive in the world. I didn't stay for the afterbirth to be delivered. I just wanted to tell my mam that I'd seen a baby being born. So I ran out of the room.

30:09The maternity unit in Neath Hospital was at the top of a hill. And I just ran down to a phone box to phone my mam. I got back and the labour ward sister gave me a huge telling off, a well-deserved telling off, that, you know, the birth hadn't been completed because the afterbirth hadn't been delivered. Don't you ever do that again. I can tell you that I didn't ever do that again. I mean, it sounds like you loved it from the beginning. You found a passion. I wonder about what was driving you during that time, whether work offered a kind of salvation. I mean, obviously, literally a way out of the circumstances that you were in, but also emotionally, personally.