Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 29 March 2022
As a member of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and as a registered nurse, I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I thank everyone involved in giving evidence to our inquiry, which covered the many areas that have been spoken about today by colleagues from all parties.
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As our committee report states, women are at substantially increased risk of severe mental illness and psychiatric in-patient admission during the perinatal period. In most cases, it is mothers who are most affected, although Gillian Martin highlighted the specific example of a dad who was severely impacted by the birth of their child and the loss of the mum. Those mental health problems can affect all family members, and the effects of Covid-19 featured in much of the evidence that we took in our inquiry.
The committee’s inquiry into experiences before, during and after the birth of a child highlighted a number of issues that new mothers face with the support that they receive. We heard evidence from some women affected by baby loss who reported giving birth close to women giving birth to healthy babies. I am sure that that is completely traumatising.
A constituent contacted me about that issue. They gave birth to a stillborn baby in Dumfries and could hear other babies crying in the next room. Following lots of work with NHS Dumfries and Galloway, the Dumfries and Galloway branch of the charity Sands became involved in supporting the process. The health board changed its arrangements so that any woman experiencing baby loss in Dumfries and Galloway is supported in a different space. However, that is not the case across the whole of Scotland. I note the importance of the committee’s recommendation for accelerated action to establish specialist baby loss units and for new protocols to ensure that families are consistently treated with respect in a destigmatised and trauma-informed way.
Language accessibility was another issue that stood out to me during the inquiry. Gillian Mackay touched on that. Clea Harmer, the chief executive of Sands, described scenarios in which, in the absence of a professional translator who understood bereavement, children of mothers for whom English is not the first language were relied on as translators. That included one eight-year-old child who had to help her mother. That evidence particularly stood out to me.
It is, however, welcome that the Scottish Government continues to prioritise improvements to care through the implementation of the best start programme and in partnership with senior leaders and clinicians. That includes the development of specialist community perinatal mental health services, including language services, across all health boards. That will be really important as we receive refugees from Ukraine and will build on work that has been done with Syrian refugees. I ask the minister to give an update on the work to support language services.
The Scottish Government is undertaking a huge amount of work to improve perinatal mental health services. In September 2021, the Scottish Government published its maternity and neonatal (perinatal) adverse event review process. The Scottish Government has invested more than £60 million in perinatal mental health, including an investment of almost £2 million in the third sector.
We know how important the third sector is in supporting women throughout their pregnancy and post pregnancy. The funding includes money for community specialist mental health services in every health board in Scotland and for in-patient services for women with the highest level of need. In addition, there is a commitment to investment in the third sector across 33 different organisations, including Sands, which operates across Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders to provide support for women and families.
Although that work is welcome, much can be done, including at health board level. I am conscious of the time, so I will stop there. I welcome the debate and the work of all my committee colleagues.