Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 29 March 2022
That is very much the evidence that we heard loud and clear. The nimbleness of the third sector provides such a lifeline to those people.
As the committee took evidence, it became clear that accessing primary care services, community services, third sector services and specialist services involves barriers for individuals who are in dire need of support. What does that mean? It means that, often, support is available only for acute cases and interventions.
The BMA told us that the bar for referral is set high. How can that be right, given that suicide is the leading cause of maternal deaths in the period of six weeks to a year after the end of pregnancy?
I welcome the minister’s pledge that steps are being taken to ensure that the service landscape is more accessible, yet services are limited not just in their accessibility but in their consistency and structure. Alex Cole-Hamilton spoke of the postcode lottery of services that our families face across the country.
Let us please not sit here today and use the pandemic as a justification. Although it may have deepened the crisis, it has also acted as a monumental volcanic fissure, exposing the sheer scale of the problem: the underinvestment, the lack of planning and the lack of focus. Those issues long predated March 2020.
In particular, the report highlights the stresses that are placed on the midwifery profession by years of inadequate workforce planning under the SNP Government, under which workforce planning always appears to take a back seat.
As things stand, there is a current and long-standing shortfall of midwives in Scotland. As Carol Mochan mentioned, this is what a midwife said in response to a recent survey by the Royal College of Midwives:
“I cannot remember the last time we had safe staffing within our unit. On a daily basis, we are struggling to provide a decent standard of care to our women and their families.”
Staff shortages are having an impact not just on recruitment and retention, but on training, including training on perinatal mental health, which is too often failing to take place because of staff shortages.
As I mentioned in my introduction, I welcome the fact that baby loss fell within the scope of the committee’s inquiry. We need to ensure that every health board has specialist baby loss units, which should be sympathetically located. Those units must have a means of entry and exit that is separate from maternity wards, so as not to cause additional stress, and in no circumstance should women have to walk the length of the maternity ward to access support.
I turn to the pandemic. Covid has, without question, placed severe restrictions on pregnant women. Women have been forced to attend scans without support; forced to receive sometimes devastating news; left on their own to come to terms with a loss that is beyond understanding; and left to go through labour with no support. Further, the removal of support groups and postnatal classes has undoubtedly reinforced feelings of isolation and abandonment. Natalie Don shared the very real experiences that she went through during pregnancy, and I congratulate her on her good news.
Given those sobering truths, as we learn to live with Covid, I strongly believe that the SNP Government must undertake an urgent review of perinatal mental health provision during the pandemic. If we are to learn lessons for the future, we can begin only by reflecting on the past. As Craig Hoy highlighted, the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care said that he was “in listening mode”. Is it not about time that he got into action mode? I would also like, as Emma Harper stated, to see some “accelerated action”, so let us implement the committee’s recommendations in full.
15:46