Perinatal and infant mental health services: update

Foreword

As Chairs of the Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board and Infant Mental Health Implementation and Advisory Group, we are delighted to present the 2022-23 Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Service Updates. In this introduction we want to briefly summarise the work behind the service updates, acknowledge the dedication of our Health Boards and explain why this work is important.

In 2019, the Scottish Government established the Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board to oversee, provide strategic leadership and have overall management of the delivery of improved perinatal and infant mental health services.

Between 2019-2022 we have invested over £18 million into the development of specialist community perinatal services, infant mental health, mother and baby units and services provided by the third sector such as counselling and befriending.

Since 2019 we have invested £5.5 million in the development and implementation of specialist community perinatal services. This has meant that three Health Boards have expanded their services and there are nine new services in place, with a further two services in development. We are also rolling out integrated Infant Mental Health teams and Maternity and Neonatal Psychological Interventions teams to provide support to both parents and infants at the times it is most needed. To achieve this, we have invested £3.2 million in Infant Mental Health and £2.3 million in Maternity and Neonatal Psychological Interventions services. Currently there are seven Health Boards with new Infant Mental Health provision and a further seven where this is in development. There is also one expanded Maternity and Neonatal Psychological Interventions service with seven new services in place and a further two in development.

Service updates are based on information from the Health Board monitoring reports and supplemented with information gathered by the Programme Board during in person visits to Health Boards in summer 2022. The information and statistics from these reports and visits were collated and form the basis of each service update.

We also held meetings with people who engaged in the development of the services in each of the Health Boards, which is a key part of our work to improve perinatal and infant mental health services across Scotland. It is of course crucial that these services are led by the experience of women, infants and families, to learn from both positive and negative experiences. Consequently, we think these updates give a great insight into how services are established and developing across Scotland and where more support to accelerate the pace of change may be needed.

The Third Sector plays a key role in access to perinatal and mental health support. Over £1.8 million has been distributed to successful organisations via the Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Main Fund and Small Grants Fund. Over five and a half thousand parents, expectant parents and infants have been supported by 34 funded organisations.

We are grateful for the hard work of the Health Boards and third sector in driving forward these developments in what have been, and remain, very challenging times. With this joint working, we are now able to offer increased support of Perinatal and Infant Mental Health services to families across all of Scotland.

Prof. Hugh Masters – Chair – Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board

Dr. Roch Cantwell – Vice Chair – Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board

Dr. Anne McFadyen – Chair – Infant Mental Health Implementation Advisory Group