An Oxfordshire family waited 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive after a baby stopped breathing, an inquest heard.

Wyllow-Raine Swinburn, of Hagbourne Road,  Didcot, died after her mum spent seven minutes waiting for someone to answer a 999 call.

Wyllow-Raine was born at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford on September 27, 2022 and discharged home on the evening of September 29.

Wyllow-Raine then collapsed in the early hours of September 30.

Her mother Amelia Pill called an ambulance at 4.38am when Wyllow-Raine appeared to have stopped breathing. 

There was a delay of more than seven minutes in the emergency call being answered by South Central Ambulance Service. 

An ambulance did not arrive at the family home until 5.09am, more than 30 minutes after the call was made. 

Wyllow-Raine was taken to John Radcliffe Hospital where she was pronounced dead shortly after her arrival. 

In a statement read out by senior coroner Darren Salter at the inquest on Monday, December 2, Ms Pill said:  “I was screaming down the phone. When I was connected, they told us to give CPR. The paramedics didn’t know where the equipment was kept in the ambulance. Nobody seemed to be rushing.”

In a tribute to her daughter, she said: “It is hard to put into words how difficult it has been losing Wyllow-Raine. It has felt like a nightmare I can’t wake up from.  I will never get to see her grow up, get to know her personality, or see what she would have achieved.

"She will never get the opportunity to find the things she loves, and my daughter now has to grow up without her big sister. There will always be an empty seat at our dinner table and a hole missing in our family’s hearts.

"When this process is over, Wyllow-Raine will still never leave my thoughts.”

After a post mortem, the cause of death was given as sudden unexpected death in infancy.

The inquest heard from an independent expert Professor Simon Mitchell, a consultant neonatal paediatrician.

Professor Mitchell’s opinion on the cause of death was due to cardio respiratory arrest, due to congenital hyperinsulinism and hypoglycaemia.

Another expert witness, Professor Richard Lyon, provided a statement that said that Wyllow-Raine’s chance of survival was around one per cent. He added: “If an ambulance had arrived earlier, it would not have increased her chance of survival.”

Karen Sillicorn-Aston, clinical governance lead at South Central Ambulance Service, told the inquest that Ms Pill’s call took eight minutes to be answered and that, at the time, the nearest ambulance was 24 miles away.

Ms Sillicorn-Aston added that improvements were being made on communications between SCAS and BT, including the handling of the most critical incidents.

She said: “It was awful, an eight-minute wait is awful. But we are making improvements.”

Concluding the case, Mr Salter gave a narrative conclusion, adding: "The delay in the ambulance response time did not contribute to her death. But it took far too long to arrive."

The coroner offered his condolences to the family. He added he would write to BT to find out more about the delays in the call being connected. 

The coroner also ordered a prevention of future deaths report to SCAS on the response time.