National Assembly for Wales

We remain committed to establishing a Mother and Baby Unit in Wales and this work is being progressed as a matter of priority, but it should be recognised the implementation of such a specialised service is complex and requires consideration of a number of factors including location, workforce and premises. This work is being led by the Welsh Health Specialised Services Committee and I have committed to provide the Children, Young People and Education Committee with an update on progress in due course and will ensure that you receive a fuller response at that time. This will also include an update in relation to specialist provision for North Wales.

Welsh Government does not routinely collect the numbers of specialist perinatal midwives and health visitors by health board. However, we are aware that at March 2019 Betsi Cadwaladr, Cwm Taf, Powys and Swansea all reported having either a specialist perinatal midwife or a specialist perinatal health visitor.   Individual health boards are building perinatal teams with a range of roles which include psychologists, community psychiatric nurses and nursery nurses.

The table below sets out the specific additional recurrent funding allocated from Welsh Government to support the development of perinatal mental health services.  From 2018 this includes where health boards have opted to invest some of the wider resource allocated for mental health  service development to perinatal mental health services in order to deliver on the requirement for all health boards to meet the All Wales Perinatal Mental Health Standards by March 2020 and the Royal College of Psychiatrist’s Perinatal Community Standards by March 2021 This does not include funding which health boards direct towards perinatal mental health from their discretionary allocations. We have also made perinatal mental health a priority area within the service improvement funding which commenced this year.

We are currently developing a mental health core data set which will then ensure formal mechanisms for collecting performance management and outcome data from the new community perinatal mental health services are in place. As with any new health service, building a comprehensive and robust data collection system is a complex process and takes time.  Whilst the formal data collection systems are being established, as part of our monitoring of the community services in health boards, we have been requesting information on the number of staff in posts, number of referrals and interventions offered every six months.  

From 1 January 2019 to 31 March 2019, 853 referrals were accepted across Wales, Welsh Government does not hold complete data on the average length of time before access; this information should be obtained from the health board directly.