Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-05.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 2 February 2016 to Question 24674, what steps he is taking to ensure that trained specialist mental health staff are available to support mothers in every birthing unit by 2017; if he will provide an interim progress report on that work; and how he plans to assess whether that objective has been achieved by 2017.
Alistair Burt
Health Education England (HEE) has a mandate commitment to ensure that trained specialist mental health staff are available to support mothers in every birthing unit by 2017.
Formal arrangements are in place between the Department and HEE to review performance on a regular basis. These include reports on progress against mandate commitments and quarterly accountability meetings between the Department’s senior officials and the HEE chief executive and executive directors.
The HEE Perinatal Mental Health programme aims to ensure that the maternity workforce has access to the right, skills and knowledge that will enable them to provide high quality perinatal mental health care from prevention through to treatment for women throughout pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period. This includes partnership working with stakeholders, including the Royal College of Midwives to meet the multi professional education and training requirements.
At local level, it is for employers to ensure that staff have received appropriate perinatal mental health training to enable them to deliver high quality care and support to mothers during pregnancy and the first year after birth.
