Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board minutes: 25 March 2021

Attendees and apologies

Author

• Alex Brown             

Present

• Roch Cantwell, Vice Chair, NHS National Services Scotland
• Hannah Axon, Policy Manager, COSLA
• Alex Brown, Programme Support Officer, NHS National Services Scotland
• Ruth Christie, Workstream Lead, Children, Young People, Families and Relationships, Scottish Government
• Amanullah Durrani,  Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist, Royal College of Psychiatrists
• Fiona Fraser, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde
• Marsaili Fraser, Performance Advisor, Inspiring Scotland
•  Sally Ann Kelly, Chief Executive, Aberlour
• Lauren Kennedy, Lead Nurse for Mental Health & Learning Disabilities, NHS 24
• Jacqueline Lambert, Professional Midwifery Advisor, Scottish Government
• Anne McFadyen, Infant Mental Health Lead, Perinatal Mental Health Managed Clinical Network, NHS National Services Scotland
• Ross McGuffie, Chief Officer, Health & Social Care, NHS Lanarkshire
• Clare McGuire, Head of Programme, NHS Education for Scotland
• Mary Ross-Davie, Director, Royal College of Midwives
• Marie Claire Shankland, Programme Director, NHS Education for Scotland
• Joanne Smith, Policy Manager, NSPCC
• Judy Thomson, Director of Psychology, NHS Education for Scotland
• Clare Thompson, Participation Officer, Maternal Mental Health Scotland
• Harriet Waugh, Head of Perinatal and Early Years Mental Health Team, Scottish Government

In attendance

• Maggie Fallon, Children and Young People’s Mental Health Team  Scottish Government
• Kelda Gaffney, on behalf of Jackie Kerr, Interim Head of Adult Services/ Specialist Mental Health Services, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde
• Irene Permaul, Perinatal and Early Years Mental Health Team, Scottish Government
• Carolyn Wales, Senior Policy Adviser, Children, Young People, Families and Relationships, Scottish Government

Apologies

• Jeff Ace, Chief Executive, NHS Dumfries & Galloway
• Sally Amor, Child Health Commissioner, NHS Highland
• Jackie Kerr, Assistant Chief Officer, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde
• Sheila Gordon, Director, CrossReach
• Catriona Johnson, Associate Programme Director, NHS National Services Scotland
• Marion MacAuley, Chief Social Work Officer, Social Work Scotland
• David Pickering-Gummer, General Manager, NHS Lothian
• Helen Sloan, Nurse Consultant Perinatal Mental Health, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde

Items and actions

Welcome, apologies and housekeeping

Roch Cantwell (Vice-Chair) welcomed everyone to the twelfth Perinatal & Infant Mental Health Programme Board (PB) meeting, and apologies were noted as above. Roch advised that he would continue as acting Chair of the Programme Board whilst Hugh Masters was working with the Chief Nursing Directorate on the pandemic response.

PNIMH programme board update

Harriet Waugh (Head of Perinatal and Early Years Mental Health Team, Scottish Government) gave an update:

• the Scottish Government (SG) 2021 pre-election period began on 25 March. Harriet advised that no new funding or policy changes would be announced in this time. She asked the PB to be mindful of the sensitivities around posting potentially political social media content in this period
• the Perinatal Peer Support Action Plan, the Equality Impact Assessment, and the Evaluability Assessment have been published, and priority actions for 2021 have been identified
• the Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Joint Delivery Board has been established, and would meet for the first time on the 28 April 2021. This board will action the work previously progressed by the Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Programme Board which drew to a close at the end of 2020. The Board will be setting up a ‘task and finish’ group, and are looking for PB representation
• due to the pre-election period, and the likelihood that 2021 to 2022 allocation figures would change due to new developments in the Health Boards (HBs), the Service Development Map will be altered to detail funding from 2019 to 2020 and 2020 to 2021, as this has been allocated and is not subject to changes in SG budget. When the HBs have returned their first formal monitoring reports (by the end of April), the Map will be updated to show ongoing service developments and engagement with people with lived experience. Mother-Baby Unit (MBU) funding has also been incorporated into the Map
• notes of interest for the Development Advisor post close on 16 April 2021. This is a two year secondment opportunity to work intensively with HBs on their service development
• the Minister for Mental Health issued a letter on 24 March 2021 to inform HBs that £8 million per year had been earmarked as recurring funding. This is to reflect the intention that funds would be provided to HBs as part of the baseline allocation following the conclusion of the Programme Board, for the Specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health and Infant Mental Health provision. This will provide reassurance for HBs in terms of recruitment, and is the first step in PB sustainability planning. The SG Policy Team have asked HBs to respond by 31 March regarding their 2020 to 2021 underspend and forward planning for 2021 to 2022
• the Equalities and Workforce Planning subgroups are next meeting on 28 April and 25 May respectively
• a SG internship had been approved to carry out a literature review, one of the seven studies recommended by Public Health Scotland (PHS) to progress the evaluation of the PB
• the Small Grants Fund, administered by Inspiring Scotland, is out for consultation until the end of March 2021, and will then be moving towards the competition
• Roch has been working on a Regional Roles paper to ensure that the HBs have a common understanding of regional roles. This paper will be circulated to the PB for comment when it is finalised
• the SG Policy Team are working on the 2021 to 2022 Delivery Plan, which will have a strong focus on a whole family systemic approach

Roch advised that work on the MBU Options Appraisal had begun once more, fuelled by data collected directly from MBU and Public Health Scotland (PHS) colleagues. There are wide ranging differences across Scotland, and Roch hopes to use the gathered information as a benchmark for expected admission numbers. The paper will go out to consultation when it has been finalised.

Infant mental health

Anne McFadyen (IMH Lead for the PNIMH Programme Board and the Perinatal Mental Health Managed Clinical Network) advised that the IMH Implementation & Advisory Group (IAG) had made progress against the 2020 to 2021 Delivery Plan actions, despite delays caused by the pandemic. The £8million recurring funding would hopefully reassure HBs about committing to the recruitment of long term posts.

Maternal Mental Health Scotland (MMHS) has agreed to provide additional Participation Officer time to help coproduce IMH services.

The IMH campaign, Wellbeing for Wee Ones, has received good feedback, and the team will be working further with Parent Club on developing their online information and resources.

NHS Fife and NHS Lanarkshire were allocated IMH funding as part of wave one, and they are progressing recruitment. NHS Highland, NHS Lothian and NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde (GGC) form wave two of IMH funding. Lothian and Highland have partnered with the Parent Infant Foundation, who will support their service development.

The next IMH-IAG meeting will take place on 31 March 2021.

Updates from programme board partners

Participation Officer

Clare Thompson (Participation Officer, Maternal Mental Health Scotland) gave an update:

• the blog post explores the collaborative process used to create a terms of reference to guide the work of the Experts by Experience Reference Group
• Rosey Adams, a member of the Experts by Experience Reference Group, has been appointed as Lived Experience Lead for NHS Tayside’s Perinatal Mental Health Implementation group
• the MMHS participatory arts project, led by Elaine Connell, is ongoing
• working with Amina Muslim Women’s Resource Centre, Public Health Scotland and Dundee Contemporary Arts to explore the experiences of Muslim and Black and Minority Ethnic women during pregnancy and the postnatal period
• working with Fathers Network Scotland to run focus groups collecting dad’s experiences of accessing services
• in initial conversations with Aberlour regarding looking at experiences of mothers with learning disabilities
• Laura Bennison has been appointed as Everyone’s Business Scotland Co-ordinator, and will attend the next PB meeting
• UK pregnancy charity Tommy’s has partnered with NHS England, Public Health England and King’s College London to provide resources for women who may get pregnant while managing a serious mental illness
• the Maternal Mental Health Alliance commissioned research to explore how much of a challenge the pandemic has placed on perinatal mental health and the services that support women, their partners, and families during this time
• Clare invited everyone working in implementation teams and within services to get in touch to chat about engagement with people with lived experience in their area. Clare can be contacted by email or twitter

NHS Education for Scotland

Marie-Claire Shankland (Programme Director, NES) gave an update:

• to bolster the use of the perinatal and infant mental health modules, NES have created a promotional video to encourage the interests of staff working in general mental health services
• over 700 people have completed the Introduction module of the Essential Perinatal and Infant Mental Health modules. 121 people have accessed the newest module, ‘Pharmacological Interventions.’ Data on who has the completed the modules is being produced for the specialist teams in each HB
• the first 20 Health Visitors and Midwives from the Northern HBs have completed the two-day training course to become Perinatal Mental Health Champions
• 40 new practitioners have undertaken the Warwick University IMH online course. 12 practitioners have undertaken the foundation Train the Trainer course for the Solihull Approach. Solihull Online is available to everyone, and has been accessed by over 9000 participants

Perinatal Mental Health Managed Clinical Network

Roch Cantwell gave an update as Lead Clinician for the Perinatal Mental Health Managed Clinical Network (MCN):

• the Substance Misuse paper written by Anne McFayden and Shona McCann (MCN Maternity Lead) is an important stepping stone to further changes and action. The report itself meets one of the aims in Delivering Effective Services, and the MCN hopes to utilise the report to help inform how services should be configured. Information will be circulated when the report is published
• the Care Pathways are in the formatting stage and will hopefully be published soon. The accompanying animations (for patients and families) will be finalised later in 2021
• the completed Role Definition papers are available on the MCN website. The Social Worker paper will be finalised soon
• the MCN are currently focused on developing their workplan for 2021 to 2022

Next meeting

Thursday 27th May 2021, 14:00 to 15:30.