Baby Loss Awareness Week
We’ve gone pink and blue to support Baby Loss Awareness Week.
The aim is to raise more awareness of pregnancy and baby loss including the impact it has on individuals and families, provide support to anyone affected through bereavement, work alongside health professionals and services and reduce preventable deaths.
This article aims to educate employers on how they can support employees who have suffered baby loss, and detail what can be done to support the employee.
Baby loss awareness is a really important topic in particular for NORI HR senior advisor Lizzie Knowles, who’s close family have suffered bereavement. Lizzie and her family have all the support of the team at NORI HR and Lizzie is supporting the campaign and taking time to focus on and look at the key questions employers need to be asking themselves as employees suffer such at difficult time.
Impact of Baby Loss:
It is estimated that in the UK 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in loss, and that 1 in 200 pregnancies ends in stillbirth.
Studies led by Imperial Scientists estimated that 1 in 5 women who experience a miscarriage will go on to have long term post-traumatic stress and experience a serious impact on their mental health.
Further studies by Tommy’s National Centre for Miscarriage Research found that miscarriage will have a profound psychological effect on both parents. It was found that miscarriage almost quadrupled the risk of suicide, doubled the risk of depression, and similarly raised the risk of anxiety.
Miscarriage and baby loss impacts not just expectant mothers, but their partners and entire families too.
Tommy’s estimates in the UK the combined cost to the NHS and the lost productivity to companies is at least £471m a year, but thinks it could be as much as £1bn a year.
Click the link below for more information on the following :
- Time off after Baby Loss
- Pay while off
- Emotional Support
- Return to work
- Baby Loss and Miscarriage Policy
- Additional Resources
