what evidence it considered regarding the potential consequences of separating a mother from their newborn in connection with the proposed…

The Best Start emphasises parents as key partners in caring for their baby and aims to keep mothers and babies, and families together as much as possible in the crucial early weeks, with services designed around them.
The new model of care aims to minimise the separation of families, and to support parents with babies in neonatal care. We have a number of measures already in place to support families:Providing accommodation for parents to stay on or near neonatal units;Roll out of the Young Patients Family Fund (formerly the Neonatal Expenses Fund) to support families with the costs of travel, accommodation and food whilst their baby is in neonatal care;andRepatriating babies to their local neonatal units as soon as clinically possible.
Under the new model of care mothers in suspected extreme pre-term labour are transferred before they give birth (in-utero) to maternity units in the hospitals that have neonatal intensive care units. Experience from the Early Implementer Boards indicates that this will happen in the vast majority of cases. On occasion when it is not possible to transfer mothers before they give birth, the baby will be stabilised and transferred to a NICU by the specialist neonatal transport service ScotSTAR, and the mother will be transferred to the maternity unit in the same hospital as her baby.