She survived abuse, poverty, and homelessness. She was initially turned down for the career she dreamed of. But nothing could stop Donna Ockenden making it
As one of Britain's most senior and respected healthcare leaders midwife Donna Ockenden has headed high-profile government reviews into maternity deaths and failings. An advocate for women and families at some of the most vulnerable times of their lives she holds the powers that be to account when systems fail.
Her own story too is one of being failed by systems and people who should have been there to help. Born in 1966 and growing up in Aberaman, in the Cynon Valley, Donna was affected by poverty and family breakdown as a child then abuse and homelessness as a teenager. At times teachers never noticed or asked what was wrong when her high-achieving dipped.
Rather than being broken by these experiences Donna organised her own O-level exams when taken out of her school abruptly, tried to warn an unheeding mother of abuse by her grandfather, and pursued a stellar career in the NHS and internationally. Told by the first hospital she applied to that she was too low calibre she went on to be a leading figure in health and is currently chairing the biggest ever maternity review in Britain.
Telling her story she stops at times to wonder: "Were there social services in Wales?". Even the legal system failed to protect her - Donna was shouted at by an "impatient judge" deciding with which parent she should stay with. Read the biggest stories in Wales first by signing up to our daily newsletter here.
The senior midwife, who initially wanted to study law, says she was tricked into going to Merthyr Tydfil Magistrates' Court by her mother during proceedings to determine whether she should stay in Wales or be taken to Ireland with her and her new husband.
Raising his voice at Donna an "impatient" judge demanded to know her preference while her father implored: "Don't take my children away." Overwhelmed by the whole experience the 14-year-old told the court: "I just want everyone to be happy."
It's that wish which seems to have guided Donna's career - a need to create safety when you cannot rely on those around you. Initially she says she was attracted to nursing when she left school because it offered students a wage and somewhere to live in the 1980s. Living in a homeless hostel with her mother and siblings at the time the teenage Donna saw it as a way to help support them all.
Going on to build a senior nursing and healthcare career here and internationally Donna's work includes chairing the Independent Reviews of Maternity Services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust, chairing the Governance Review at Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, and the inquiry into the Tawel Fan Ward at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd.
In May 2022 Donna was appointed as the new chair of the Independent Review into Maternity Services at the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. The Ockenden Review, as it is known, followed numerous deaths and cases of brain damage in babies and deaths of mothers at the trust.
Since it began in September 2022 a total of 2,425 families have joined the review, which will now publish its final report in June 2026 - later than the original September 2025 date to accommodate an increase in families joining.
As its chair Donna is leading a team of experienced doctors and midwives with no connection to Nottingham to review cases of serious, and potentially serious, concern there.
Investigating failings, maternal and neonatal deaths, and tragedy is at times harrowing work. Donna is spurred on by a promise she made early in her career to a very sick newborn. She told the dying baby Gina she would work to prevent avoidable deaths like hers.
She is also influenced by her childhood in the south Wales valleys - a childhood which she says was very happy at times - but also the good and bad experiences.
Born into an "extremely poor" family in Aberaman Donna, then Donna Thomas, had to fend off "Auntie Evelyn" the debt collector from a young age.
Her mother Patricia was troubled, rarely slept, and found physical affection towards her children hard. Later they learned this was because she herself held the scars of childhood abuse - something that led her to uproot her children from the lives they knew.
Although Donna also has "lovely memories of Aberaman" in the 1970s, playing in the street and with school friends, life was hard for the Thomas family.
Her father Cleighton worked six days a week on building sites, the house had no central heating, and washing was done once a week on a Sunday morning in a twin tub.
"My parents got into very serious debt and there was a debt collector who came to the house who my parents were terrified of.
"They would hide under the bed and I would answer the door. 'Auntie Evelyn' would come anytime from 7am to 10pm."
While Donna was still at Blaengwawr Primary in 1973 her father took the massive step to go abroad to work on Das Island off the coast of Abu Dhabi on an oil and gas exporting field.
This left her mother alone with four children and the youngest just four months old. For three years Donna's father was only home for two weeks in every six months before the family went to live with him in Abu Dhabi then Iran. This brief lull in the family's fortunes came to a halt with the Iranian revolution in 1979 when they came back to Wales.
But more upheaval was to follow. Donna was 15 and happy at Gadlys school in Aberdare, preparing for O-levels, when her mother left her father and suddenly took the children to Ireland with her new husband.
With their lives and education upended the children were told they were going to Ireland for the weekend. When their mother flushed their goldfish away they suspected it was for longer but were "too scared" to ask.
"I have questioned did social services exist in Wales in the 1980s," says Donna looking back.
"I have no idea how it was allowed to happen. As siblings we often wondered where social services were and how we pulled through.
"Taken to court I said I didn't know if I wanted to go to Ireland and the judge shouted at me and was very impatient."
So in her fourth year of high school Donna found herself in a new country with different exams while her devastated father stayed in Wales living with his mother - known to Donna as "Nanny Beryl" and one of the only constant and stabilising influences in the children's lives at the time.
Arriving in County Longford, Ireland, without having had the chance to say goodbye to friends, their father, or Nanny Beryl the children were enrolled in a convent school and told their surname was now Williams not Thomas.
"I thought: 'Oh my God - she has changed our names'," says Donna.
The Irish curriculum at their new convent school was so different Donna realised she wouldn't have time to get good exam grades. She tried to get her own books to learn at a library and asked another school, the Oliver Plunkett vocational school, to help her take O-levels they didn't run there.
Getting these exams with help from "lovely teachers" was Donna's first step to try to return to Wales. But Patricia insisted that for A-levels she must go to Bristol to live with her maternal grandfather who then proceeded to abuse her as he had abused his daughter before.
Aged 16 Donna found herself living in Bristol with the grandfather who had abused her mother physically and emotionally as a child and proceeded to do the same to her. Her grandmother and other family members apparently did not want to know.
"I think my mum blocked out the abuse she had from her father. I went into the lion's den. I went to live with him and to Portway School in Shirehampton to do A-levels. I was expected to do well and wanted to go to university to do law.
"My grandfather was absolutely vile. He resented me being there. I had no money and was with two old-age pensioners. After three weeks he started to be 'nice'. It took me months to realise I was being spied on."
Donna says her grandfather watched her dressing and touched her. The locks to the bathroom and her bedroom were continually broken.
"I tried raising concerns with my mother's family but they didn't want to know."
Her grandfather blocked external phone calls but one Sunday when he was out Donna rang the operator and told her what was happening. The operator told her she must tell police. "This was a proper human being who said to me: 'Come back to me if your mother doesn't help'."
But Patricia didn't help. Instead she said her new husband had left her and she was coming to Bristol with the rest of the children. Donna knew this put them all at risk of abuse too.
"I told her not to come and that my grandfather was not safe but she didn't want to know."
As she tried to revise for her upcoming A-levels in the summer of 1984 Donna awaited their arrival fretting over how to keep them safe. No-one at her school in Bristol bothered to notice, or ask, why a previously high-achieving student was now performing so badly.
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Determined to protect her mother and siblings when they arrived Donna organised a rota so none of them would be alone with the grandfather but despite this she could not protect them. One day he beat Donna's younger brother badly. The siblings "rounded" on their grandfather - this attack on the boy was too much.
Enraged at being confronted the grandfather threw his daughter and grandchildren out on the street.
Now the family found themselves living in a homeless hostel with no cooking facilities and no security. Struggling on with revising for her A-levels Donna's education was a route out but that was suffering too.
"I still do not understand how a girl at school in Bristol, expected to get good A-level results, whose achievements suddenly fall off a cliff and she's scraping on the bottom, why no-one asked any questions.
"Instead of the As and Bs I was expected to get I got two Ds and an E. Now I think: 'How amazing I survived in one piece'. Why did the teachers not ask what was going on?"
Later that summer when Donna applied to study nursing at Bristol Royal Infirmary they wrote back saying she was not of the calibre they wanted and to apply to a nursing school of a "lower calibre".
Stung but undeterred she approached West Glamorgan School of Nursing, got in, trained happily, and qualified at Neath General in 1989. The rest of her career is history and Bristol's misplaced rejection a distant memory.
"I have loved every day of my career and love what I do," says Donna with a smile when asked what she thinks of the nurse trainer who didn't want her in Bristol.
After qualifying as a nurse in Neath she went on to train as a midwife in Portsmouth. Donna went on to work for several years in Abu Dhabi and Muscat, the capital of Oman, where she was head of midwifery and gynaecology.
Returning to the UK as head of midwifery and divisional director in Portsmouth she was promoted to senior NHS roles in London and her expertise called upon to lead high-profile investigations and neonatal and maternity inquiries nationwide.
It was the death of baby Gina very early in her career that made Donna determined to make maternity and neonatal care safer. As a training midwife she was asked to help care for little Gina who had been born in a nearby hospital but transferred to Portsmouth for expert neonatal support.
Gina was too ill to survive despite the best efforts of the Portsmouth neonatal team. Watching her final hours Donna says she made a "Gina promise" telling the baby that no matter how long or short her career in midwifery she would dedicate it to making care safer so that babies like her wouldn't die avoidably. It's a promise she's kept.
As she reflects on the harrowing inquiries she has headed Donna is clear in her assessment of the state of maternity services in the UK. "There are chronic problems in maternity and perinatal care and chronic underfunding. There is a lack of workforce too," she warns.
"There is definitely a culture across perinatal care where women and families are not heard - they are frequently marginalised. Family concerns are dismissed and sometimes, but not always, there is a culture of not investigating problems properly.
"There are inequalities in the UK and as a whole these have got worse . If you are poorer, Asian, or black your outcomes are likely to be worse.
"Problems are also widespread."
Despite these widespread systemic problems, and the deeply troubling testimony from them, Donna says she loves what she does and "it does make a difference".
When faced with stonewalling from authorities she is determined to get to the facts, support those who should be supported when things go wrong, and improve the system.
With both her parents now dead and two grown-up daughters Donna still feels a strong connection to Wales. She lives in Sussex but returns to visit Wales several times a year and is close to her siblings v all of whom have gone on to successful lives and careers.
While relations with her mother got so bad that Donna did not speak to her for the last 20 years of her life she says she understands now that Patricia was affected by the abuse she had suffered as a child.
She credits her mother for fostering her love of reading and learning as a very young child in Aberaman. Donna remembers Patricia buying and reading her Ladybird books and teaching her to read before things went so wrong.
And it was her mother she rang immediately to describe the excitement she felt seeing a baby born for the first time as a young nurse in Neath. It was an experience which set Donna on the path to help create safer maternity and neonatal services safer for babies and women - a task fired up by her "Gina promise" and childhood in Wales.