Families trying to find urial sites of stillborn babies still face barriers’

A woman who has helped find the final resting places of nearly 3,500 stillborn babies has said barriers remain to bereaved parents seeking the truth about their children's fate.

Paula Jackson set up the charity Brief Lives Remembered in 2004 after helping a friend based in Australia find the grave of his twin sister, named Zoe, who was stillborn at a military hospital in Aldershot in 1960.

As late as the 1990s, stillborn babies were routinely removed from their parents before they had a chance to hold or even look at the child, the theory being that any connection would prolong the grief. The babies were often taken to cemeteries and buried in unmarked mass graves.

MPs have called for a government apology to the parents of stillborn children for what appears to have been a formal policy for decades.

Jackson, who is based in Guildford, is unsure if an apology would make any difference, but says there are still too many obstacles for bereaved parents who decide to find the burial sites of their stillborn children.

"We need to make sure that no parent who wants to find their baby has barriers in the way of them, because we know there are barriers," she said.

Some but not all cemeteries still levy a charge to parents hoping to find their stillborn baby's grave. "They are charging mothers for finding her own baby," Jackson said. "It's not her fault her baby was taken away from her.