Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 29 March 2022
I am pleased to respond to the debate on behalf of the Scottish Government. I thank the convener and members of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee for raising much-needed awareness of perinatal mental health through the inquiry. I offer thanks in particular to all those who made the effort to contribute through the consultation and the evidence sessions.
As I acknowledged when I gave evidence, the importance of perinatal mental health right now in Scotland has been demonstrated by the impressive range of responses and engagement from professionals, organisations and individuals with lived experience. The inquiry has opened the door further to conversations about mental wellbeing both during the perinatal period and more widely. In doing so, it helps us to further reduce stigma and actively promote awareness. It also helps us to ensure that our work is aligned with the core values of the women and families maternal mental health pledge.
That is especially important at present, as we acknowledge the impact that the pandemic has had on the mental health of new and expectant parents. Since 2019, the programme board has provided strategic oversight of significant investment across community perinatal mental health services, the third sector, mother and baby units, infant mental health services and maternity and neonatal psychological interventions. More than £16 million has been invested across Scotland, and as a result 10 boards now have specialist community perinatal mental health teams and eight have maternity and neonatal psychological intervention services. We continue to work with boards on developing services further on a local and regional basis to ensure that specialist support is available across all areas of Scotland by March next year.
With regard to the third sector, we have delivered more than £1.8 million of funding, which has led to the delivery of support to more than 3,000 parents, expectant parents and infants. An emerging evaluation shows that the funded work has contributed to parents feeling less isolated and better able to meet the needs of their infants and children.
The programme board will continue to ensure that lived experience is at the heart of service development, implementation and provision. We now have two dedicated participation officers who offer support around perinatal mental health, infants, fathers and equalities. That helps us to ensure that the significant upscaling of existing services and creation of new services are led by the needs of women and families.
One way in which we are listening to the voices of women and families is through our consultation on options to increase mother and baby unit capacity. The issue of how best to support access to that specialist resource is important; the committee picked up on it in its report. We are very much in listening mode on the issue and I encourage anyone who is interested to respond to the consultation, so that a wide range of views can inform the next steps.
I know from conversations with women and families that the location of mother and baby units is of particular concern in the north of Scotland. I am therefore pleased to note that a specialist perinatal mental health community service will launch in Grampian shortly. The service will provide a specialist, multidisciplinary community service to women and families in the north-east and is part of the funding and development work that the perinatal and infant mental health programme board supports.
I recently visited the new service in Aberdeen and spoke to staff and women with lived experience. I know how much difference it will make to families in Grampian.
I want to talk about the committee’s report and recommendations. As the committee is aware and as the convener said, we responded yesterday to the committee’s recommendations—our response was comprehensive. The report contained a broad variety of recommendations, which we considered in depth, and I want to highlight the difference that the recommendations and the continuation of the programme board’s work will make to women, infants and families in Scotland.
We are taking steps to ensure that the service landscape is more accessible to families who need support. That includes work to increase awareness of care pathways and highlight developments in specialist services, and a restatement of our commitment to the rights of women, infants and families.
We are prioritising raising awareness of perinatal and infant mental health and ensuring that families and professionals play an active role in our national work on stigma reduction.
We are supporting local areas to provide seamless transitions for families by tackling difficult issues to do with cross-sector working, so that families can more easily access the right support at the time when they need it.
Finally, we will ensure that our work continues to be informed by evidence and lived experience, by evaluating and assessing the difference that our investment is making to the lives of women, infants and families throughout Scotland.
The inquiry recommendations touch on other areas, such as maternity provision, breastfeeding and baby loss. The Government acknowledges the importance of support across pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period and is committed to supporting mental health and wider wellbeing throughout that time.
Our work around perinatal mental health is action focused and ambitious. We are committed to ensuring that the input to the committee’s inquiry, alongside the findings and recommendations that followed the inquiry, are respected and valued as they further support and inform our continuing programme of work.