Up until two months ago, there were six babies left unclaimed in the morgue at Katherine hospital, a Senate inquiry into stillbirths has been told.
Two of the babies have been there since 2013, Katherine hospital staff told the inquiry. Three babies were buried this year, but there are three babies still in the morgue.
All six babies were stillborn at the hospital between 2013 and 2017.
Chair of the select committee on stillbirth research and education, NT Labor Senator Malarndirri McCarthy said the situation raised a “serious question about humanity”.
“Who is responsible here?” McCarthy asked.
Katherine hospital’s clinical nursing midwife, Sara Potter told the committee that “wraparound services available elsewhere” for mothers of stillborn babies, “aren’t here in Katherine”.
There was one social worker at Katherine hospital and one Aboriginal liaison officer, Potter said, who spent much of their time managing cases in accident and emergency.
The hospital only has two Aboriginal health practitioners, one in emergency and the other on the surgical ward. There are no Aboriginal midwives.
“What we need to understand here is what’s lacking for you to work directly with family to enable them to have assistance immediately,” McCarthy said.
“The grief counselling that should occur for a family when child dies, the ability for family to be surrounded by that support, to know what their rights are in relation to the burial of a child, the autopsy of a child – if those resources are lacking that enables a child to lay dead in a morgue for five or six years, there is a serious question about humanity that is not being answered here.”
Senior midwifery advisor, Belinda Jennings said that she had not heard of it happening in other jurisdictions.
“A baby might lie in a mortuary for several months while sorry business gets arranged, but for people who are itinerant, they might be identified and hooked in with a funeral director much earlier so that the funeral director liaises directly with family to ensure the baby is treated with respect in a timely manner,” Jennings said.
As well as “gaps” in culturally appropriate supports for mothers and families, the cost of burials in Katherine has been prohibitively expensive, Potter told the committee.
Families receive a one-off bereavement payment from Centrelink of $2,199.83 when a baby is stillborn. But until this year, the only funeral business in Katherine charged $4,000 for a funeral, Potter said.
A second funeral company began earlier this year, which offers a cheaper service for around $2,500 dollars.
“As of a year ago, the Centrelink payment wouldn’t have got the baby buried. The payment didn’t cover the cost of what the funeral services are,” she said.
“How would a woman two years ago get a baby buried if she’s Centrelink dependent?
“She wouldn’t. Her bereavement money doesn’t equal the cost of the local funeral service, and there’s a difference of a thousand dollars, which most families would find hard to find in a one month space, and to me that’s huge.”
Senator Kristina Keneally said it was “almost intolerable that the hospital is in the circumstance where there are babies there now for going on five years … this can’t continue indefinitely” while Greens Senator Janet Rice said it was “very disturbing” and an “awful situation”.
“How much of it is reflective of a system that is just not working in terms of providing culturally appropriate support for women who have stillbirths,” Rice said.
The Northern Territory health department told Guardian Australia there “are a range of complex, exceptional and sensitive reasons why bodies may stay in the morgue for a lengthy period of time”.
Royal Darwin hospital has recently reviewed the way next of kin are supported and managed after the death of a family member, an NT health spokesperson said.
“New guidelines have been developed to better support and manage situations where family may be undecided on how to manage a body. These guidelines have been piloted at Royal Darwin hospital over the past 12 months.”
In the pilot program, a social worker coordinates arrangements with the family, including a monthly review of each case to ensure progression on funeral/cremation arrangements.
Similar guidelines will be rolled out across all top end health services hospitals “in the future” the spokesperson said.
